


By and Down

by em_gnat



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Chronic Pain, Drug Addiction, Gen, all your favs are Ace
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-04 07:02:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4129113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/em_gnat/pseuds/em_gnat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his expulsion from the Order, Raleigh Samson prowls Kirkwall's back streets, searching for the man he once was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

_Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow._

_In their blood the Maker’s will is written._

_**-Benedictions 4:11** _

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 _In his dream, he sees Cullen the way he never could have seen him, for he wasn’t there at Kinloch Hold, in the dark, with the smell of rotting meat and old blood cloying to the back of his throat. His mind invents how it would have looked, piecing it together from whispered rumors --gore smeared across the floor, corruption crawling up the walls like massive pustules ready to burst -- and from stale words inscribed in ink: “_ In the apprentices quarters: four bodies, all burnt beyond recognition. In the downstairs corridor, the parts of three apprentices and two templars…”

_But in the dark that only dreams can create, so complete and menacing, he sees tears slick and hot on the young man’s face, and he feels them on his own face, dripping down his jaw, as the young man heaves and strains with repressed sobs. Cullen, shivering in his smallclothes, clinging to the black bars of his prison. And the bars are barbed with thorns, and the bars seem to sweat blood._

_“I will not break, I will not!” How many times had Samson heard that refrain, late at night, from the bed across the room from him?_

_Blood on the young man’s mouth, the slash across his lips livid and bright. That’s where the scar came from, from Kinloch Hold,  from the haunted dark. “I will not break, I will not” but his voice breaks, Samson hears it. Cullen sobs, a low guttural sound. “Help me, please, someone.”_

_Samson takes a step back, reaching for the door he walked through, but there is no door. Was there ever a door? He cannot see behind him, but his hand touches something cold and wet and pocked with holes that gape like stab wounds._

_“Please,” Cullen’s voice is caught in that hitching rhythm, that sob that is locked in his chest. There is no escape from it, no door. Samson feels a sob in his own chest, welling up until that nightmare prison fills with the unuttered echo of it._

_“Raleigh, please. Help me.”_

 

Samson jolted awake hard, his body on fire. He rolled up onto his knees and heaved out last night’s meager supper next to a dead rat and an empty bottle of rotgut. When his stomach was emptied, he coughed, spit and wiped his knuckles across his cracked lips . He shook hard all over, but it wasn’t the dream that did it. The lyrium-hunger had him in it’s fist and he palpitated like a crushed heart.

“He never called me Raleigh” he grumbles to himself, wrapping his arms around his middle and laying back down in the alley filth. _He called me many things, but never that._

Fool, traitor, disgrace to the sunburst shield. Many things, but not  _Raleigh._

What a wicked trick for his fevered mind to play, to make his lyrium-hunger wear Cullen Rutherford’s face. If there was anyone in all Thedas who so embodied the pride and the pain of the Order, it was Rutherford. There was no greater tragedy than seeing that proud young man weeping desperately in the charnel house that Kinloch Hold had become.

But had the blood on the bar's been blue, had lyrium poured from the scar on Cullen’s mouth, Samson might have gotten down on his knees to lick the stuff from where it pooled between the flagstones on the grimy prison floor. He hurt so bad, he would have cut the young man open himself to drink the lyrium from of his veins. The boy hadn’t done anything to deserve that, but what had Samson done to deserve this?

“You dead yet?”, a rough voice barked out from the end of the alley, and several voices joined the drunk in a chorus of rough laughter.

“Not yet.”, Samson grit out, teeth chattering. “Give it a few more minutes, then you can pick my pockets.”

“You ain't a coin on you, man. Only thing on you worth a few coppers are your boots.”

And the boots were where he kept the coin he earned from begging all day. He’d cut the swollen bastard’s throat before he let him rest a hand on those boots.

“Maybe we’ll just take em now, right?”  The drunk said, shuffling heavy down the alley.

A pair of club-sized hands seized Samon’s left boot and wrenched his foot up, twisting his leg. The drunk shook him hard, like a terrier shakes a rat. A few coppers rolled out of the boot and jingled as they struck the ground.

“What have we here?” The drunk chuckled, distracted.

Samson ripped his foot away. The boot came off in the drunk’s grip, but he stumbled against the alley wall, snorting with laughter. “Lookie what I have here!”

Breathing erratically, Samson rolled up onto his knees and pulled his dagger from where it was hidden beneath his shirt .

“And here’s this, good steel here,” he growled, baring his teeth in a vicious smile. “You wouldn’t want to forget this, would you, lad?”

The drunk reeled back with an affronted look, his red face turning purple. “Hey now, I was only playing with you!”

“That strung out fool giving you trouble, Carr?”

_Fool. Traitor. Disgrace to the sunburst shield._

Samson shook the blade at him and held that crooked grin

“No trouble.”, the drunk muttered, backing up a step. Samson followed him out of the alley, the dagger held out before him. One of the drunk’s friends saw the pair of them emerge, saw the dagger held in Samson’s steady hand while all the rest of him was shaking, and laughed out loud.

“Well isnt that the rat chasing the terrier!”, she guffawed. “Millet, look. He’s got Carr on the run!”

“Nobody got me on the run!” The drunk protested loudly, and without a word of warning he launched at Samson with his giant fists.

He was no trained fighter, not like the knights Samson was used to. The man wouldn’t know the right way to hold a shield if it was shoved into his hands. He was a dock worker, by the look of him, and his massive shoulders were for lifting crates and hauling ropes. If Samson had been in his old form, he might have simply stepped aside and knocked the man out with a gauntleted fist to the side of his head.

But Samson’s gauntlets were gone. They been the first things he’d sold when he been turned out of the Gallows. He sold everything, piecemeal. He kept the breast plate and the shield as long as he could because they bore the sun-mark. Shivering in some dark warehouse, or under a stack of crates, he polished that sunmark with his sleeve and gazed at it’s cold warmth hungrily, choked with anger and love and all the regrets that only come in the dark hours before dawn. But the sunburst couldn’t keep him warm, and he’d pawned that away too. Then sword had been stolen

Now, Samson’s hand were bare, scratched, the knuckles swollen and tender. When he tried to sidestep the drunk’s driving firsts, his bare foot came down on a broken bottle.

“Get him Carr, get him!”, a man shouted in hysterical glee.

Samson grabbed at a barrel, pushed himself off it, but a pair of hands grabbed him by the back of his shirt and hauled him up off his feet. He twisted in Carr’s grasp, swinging a fist weakly into his face. It merely bounced off the drunk’s jaw. Carr roared with laughter. They were all laughing.

_Fool._

The drunk hit him once. Pain burst across his cheek. Holding him up with one hand, Carr wound back to strike Samson a second time. Samson found himself staring at the burlap effigy that marked The Hanged Man Tavern as it swayed slightly in the warm night breeze. Whatever happened, he deserved it.

“You lot there!”, rapped out a curt voice. “Clear out of here, you sodden louts! Back to your dens and off my street!”

“It’s the guard!”, hissed the drunk woman.

Samson was sent dropping to the ground like a rotten tomato. He fell on his knees, and sat there panting under his own weight, as they three drunks stumbled off into the night, leaving his boot behind.

The guard stomped into view. She watched them go, their curses echoing off the stone walls of Lowtown, then sighed and shook her head. She turned and noticed Samson with a start. She was tall with straight flame-haired, and her square-jawed face was freckled.  It seemed for a moment that she might cross over to Samson and offer him a hand up. Instead, she kicked his boot toward him, then turned on her heel and marched off, leaving behind only the brief impression of her disapproving green-eyed glare.

Samson eased his bleeding foot back into his boot and rose painfully to his feet,  palming the little coin purse he’d cut right off Carr’s belt. He pulled open the severed strings, letting the threadbare cloth fall open. In his palm rested enough coin to buy himself a vial of lyrium. Looking up at the moon that floated just beyond the high rooftops, he turned away from the Hanged Man and navigated his way down to the foundry district.

 

* * *

 

The night wind off the water carried the smell of sewage and the hot iron. A cluster of Carta dwarves were playing wicked grace on the steps of one of the foundries. One of them, glanced up from their game with one eye. The other eye was milky white and didn’t see him.

“Well, if it isn’t our old friend.” The dwarf shared a toothy grin around the circle. “I was starting to think something awful might have happened to you, and we would’ve missed you something fierce.”

“You would’ve missed a few coins that you could easily dig out from between your toes?” Samson snorted. “ You make more money sitting here playing cards in a night, than I do begging in a month’s time.”

“Then you should stop begging and start gambling. “ The dwarf snorted. “There’s logic for you.”

“A man needs money to gamble, and you have all my money.” Samson said, the bitterness seeping in his voice. The dwarf heard it, and his eye gleamed wickedly, like the eye of a carrion bird.

“And that’s why I’m here gambling and you’re out begging.”, he said.

The dwarf dusted his hands off and sidled over to Samson, who held the coins out in his dirty hand. The other Carta dwarves looked over with mild interest as their fellow counted out Samson’s offering. Tonight, there was a lady dwarf among them, wearing the hood and jerkin of a different Carta clan. It was a rare thing to see lady dwarves in Kirkwall. She caught him staring and smirked.

“Are you their supplier?”, Samson asked with a flare or irritation.

“It won’t be cheaper if you buy direct from me.”, she replied sweetly.

Milk-Eyed Malik grabbed Samson by the wrist and shook the coins into his own palm. Samson’s fingers clenched closed on nothing, curling into a white, weak fist. From one of the dozens of pouches on his vest, Malik produced a small vial, it’s contents casting a faint blue glow across his skin.

The mere sight of it made Samson’s breath hitch. He reached for it convulsively, swallowing and swallowing again on nothing, but dreaming of the cool burn of lyrium on his tongue. It was lyrium dust, not the liquid prefered by mages and templars alike. The dust was gritty, like shards of glass on the tongue, and it left raw burns on the lips and tongue if consumed undiluted. Samson had learned his lesson before, when he’d nearly inhaled the dust rather than mixing it with water. He was sorely tempted to make that mistake again. He snatched the vial from Milk-Eyed Malik’s hand, and the Carta dwarves laughed.

“Enjoy, templar.”, Malik chuckled.

Samson would rather be called a fool, but even though his stomach roiled at the misnomer, he didn’t have the strength to correct him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Samson meets Olivia and she calls him a hero.

A tiny vial of dust wasn’t much to get by on.

In the Order, there was never a shortage of lyrium. It was standard to drink a draught each morning after a chantry service, and templar initiate was given a ration at the beginning of every month for training purposes. Unless there was some sort of crisis, like a mage uprising, it wasn’t expected that a templar should go through more than his ration, provided one hadn’t become addicted to the stuff. But that’s what was _supposed_ to happen, right? They were supposed to be addicted to it.

There were ways of skimming from other templars’ rations. Sometimes one might use less than another, and sell his extra to a comrade for small favors. Maybe one night you stood watch for someone so that they could go off to the Blooming Rose, and she gave you a bit extra from her ration as a thank you. Maybe when your roommate was out on the training grounds, you took a little from his stash and added it to yours, and if he noticed the absence, he never said anything. The knowledge stretched between the two of you like a string that neither of you would tug at.

_Raleigh, help me._

_He never called me that._

Outside of the Order, lyrium was dangerous both to handle and to obtain. Only smugglers dealt in lyrium outside the Chantry’s restrictions, and they were a ruthless bunch who marked up the goods at considerable cost. Sometimes, the cost might be an unwary addict’s life.

The vial Samson had now was a pittance. Even mixed in water or wine, it was barely a cup-full. But restraint was nowhere to be found once the vial was in his hand. It took all his strength not to choke the granules down undiluted. But once he felt the cold burn on his tongue,  it was impossible to stop and store the rest. He always meant to keep a bit for later, for when he knew he would desperately want it, but it had been so long since his last draught.

The worst thing was that he felt the most like himself when he had a draught in him. After a sip, he felt like the man who had walked across the Gallows courtyard in his full armor, who had raised his sunburst shield in the trained grounds there, who had snorted and laughed with surprising ease among his fellow templars, never mind their differing opinions. Ah yes, they had been his comrades. His friends. He would have died shoulder to shoulder with any one of them, had it come to that. But in the end, none had said a word in his defense. They’d shook their heads and looked at him with hooded eyes, snakes all of them, hissing between themselves, “Always too soft on the mages”.

But they’d let him keep the armor.

He didn’t have the armor now, but he had the lyrium in him, and for the first time in what felt like eternity he could stand straight. When he flexed his hands into fists he remembered the power in them. He had it in him to stand up and walk back to the Hanged Man.

As the door swung closed behind him, he felt a bitter tang of disappointment that Carr and his besotted companions were not in attendance. He could have taken them now, all three of them.

 _You like my boots, do you? How about I give you a closer look?_ He would’ve stomped that drunkard until his nose was pulp.

He recognized the night crew, though. Searth, the love lorn, loudly making passes at Norah the barmaid. Tam and Reagen in the corner, one with blond hair and one with brown, arguing fervently about some very stupid thing, like whether or not darkspawn actually existed or were just invented by the Chantry to keep folk on the straight and narrow. Pipe smoke hung low around the tables. It was hot from the fireplace, and dank with the smell of sour ale and even sourer bodies. Yet there was comfort in the filth. This was familiar now.

Samson picked his way around the wooden tables to the taps, where Corff the barman was being detained by the local poet’s bad verse.

“I need your honest opinion. It must be perfect before I recite it to her. Shall I read it through again?”

“Maker, no. I mean, no, thank you. I think I’ve got it fresh enough in my mind. The part about her...breasts being like the swollen flanks of a pack horse?”

“An inspired line, that. I was just waking up, when the image came to me-”

“Just a thought,” Samson interrupted, pushing his sleeves back and slumping elbows first onto the edge of the bar. “But maybe reconsider comparing your lady-love’s breasts to a horse’s ass.”

The poet stared at Samson in stunned silence, his lips smacking open and closed like a fish in a net. Samson gave him a long, lopsided smile and turned his attention to the barman before the poet scraped up the nerve to speak again.

“‘Ey, Corff.” Samson said.

He heard, rather than saw, the poet skitter away. A wicked sense of satisfaction descended over him. It wasn't really fair to pick on the man, but then again, he asked for it. He really did. Who did he think he was, other than some noble’s third son, with all the wealth and money and nothing but free time, slumming it with the poor in Lowtown as a way of _finding himself_. One of these days, he’d likely find himself gutted in a back-alley.

“I’ve a message for you here.” Corff said jovially, “It’s been waiting three days. Where’ve you been?”

“By and down.” Samson mused, holding out his hand. The long, pale fingers were grimy, but steady. Small victories.

Corff dropped a folded scrap of paper into his palm. Samson didn’t recognize the thin, proper handwriting or the indigo ink. “ Who left this?”

“I didn’t recognize him.” Corff’s brow creased in a thoughtful frown. “An elf, though. Small, thin--”

“That’s just about every elf in Kirkwall and beyond. Try being a mite more specific.”

“I’m sorry,” the man shrugged his wide shoulders, and produced a wincing, apologetic smile. “He was wearing a hood.”

Samson gave the slip of paper one last look, then folded it again. Absently, his fingers smoothed one edge and then the other another into something resembling the points of a bird's wings. The piece of paper was just the right size for...for...He couldn’t do it. His hands didn't know how. But he had a friend once who could twist a piece of paper into the shape of a bird. It was like a magic trick without any of the magic. It was something you learned, but Samson had never gotten the knack of it.

Fiercely, Samson crushed the paper in his palm and dropped it into the half drained tankard next to him.

“I hear they’ve got a game of wicked grace going in the back” Corff offered. “Some mercenaries from the Rivaini Beards set it up, if you’re interested.”

“Right, you know me, with all this gold in need of wasting. Give me a moment to pull that 20 sovereigns out of my ass.” Samson smirked, then rose to his full height. “But I can’t tonight. I have somewhere to be.”

“Maybe you’ll have the coin for a game once you come back. You know. From seeing whoever it is you need to see.”

“I’ll think about it.” He turned to go, but paused and turned back. “If you see that bastard Carr around, tell him I’m looking for him.” Then he left.

He dove out into the night, feeling nigh invincible. The jab of pain in his foot was muted, barely anything worth noting, and the lyrium thrummed in his veins  .

 

* * *

 

The note lead Samson through the back alleys of Lowtown and into Hightown, where gilded rod-iron fences kept the pretty town-house gardens from being trod on by undeserving boots. The streets were clean, and a sweet smell of flowers lingered in the air. It was a different Kirkwall, one where the streets didn’t smell like piss and vomit, and he didn’t have to step around broken bottles and smears of blood.

Yet being here, among the houses of nobility, made him extremely uncomfortable. Even when he had been in the Order, he hadn’t belonged in Hightown. He was from less prestigious stock. The family name wasn’t a noble one. He’d grown up on the low side of Kirkwall, across from a smithy. His grand dam had complained about the noise from the ringing of the anvil constantly, until her cough finally took her. Samson had gotten used to the Gallows rather easily, because the tight barracks apartment’s reminded him of the close packed homes he was used to. But now, the pretty glass windows were an indictment that only served to remind him that he had never belong up here. He’d only been a low-born interloper for a short time, and had better scurry back to the midden where he belonged.

Perhaps it was the lyrium, perhaps it was because he was feeling like himself again, but he whistled up a defiant tavern tune. Like most of his rebellions, it was short-lived. The soft clank of plate metal warned him of the approach of the night guard. Abruptly, he cut off his song and ducked behind one of the potted trees. The guard strolled past, hesitated. Samson stepped further back into shadow, waiting with fists tight out his sides, his spine tensed. He may have to run if the guard turned and saw him, but at the moment he wanted to fight. He thought that there might be no greater satisfaction than busting his knuckles open on the visor of the guard’s helmet. It had been an eternity since he felt so strong.

But the guard wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were fixed down the length of the avenue, where the sign of the Blooming Rose glowed under a pink-payned lantern. The guard shifted from foot to foot, wrung his gauntleted hands. Samson was aware that the man was going through some sort of crisis, but he wished the bastard would hurry up and make his decision, or he really was going to have to  jump out and clobber him.

Finally, the guard cursed under his breath and turned sharply toward the Keep Square, stomping heavily away from the Rose. Good lad, back to work. Good lad, with his self restraint, self control. Good for him.

Samson headed for The Rose.

If it was strange being outside in Hightown, being inside the brothel was worse. The Rose served the finest clientele of the city and the interior was adorned with all the pomp the rich would expect; long mahogany tables, plush velvet carpets, chandeliers with little crystals dangling off of them. Despite the popularity of the establishment among others of the Order, Samson hadn’t found himself within its walls before. He had never been interested in what the Rose was selling. In that way, he'd been a model templar, without divergence or dalliance, other than the unforgivable act of treating the Circle mages like people. The knight-commander would look the other way when bands of templars roved down to the Blooming Rose, but give a kind word to a mage and you were out on your ass before the word died on your lips.

“If you’ve come to clean the slops, we’ve got a lad who does that already.” The gruff voiced door-woman folded her muscular arms over her chest. She had a grim face and a low-cut bodice.

“I’m here to meet someone.”

“You and everyone else who comes in, sweetheart. That’s sort of the idea of a place like this, isn't it?” She looked Samson over with a flick of her quick, dark eyes. “Are you with the templars?”

“No.” Samson replied, perhaps a little too roughly. The door-woman arched a brow.

“I ask,” She mused with practiced nonchalance.  “Because we have a templar in here tonight. We get them in here all the time of course, but this one’s here for business, not pleasure.”

The letter. It couldn’t be from…

Samson’s gaze darted past the door-woman, scanning the dimly lit hall for the telltale flash of silverite armor.

_There._

He saw him, and it wasn’t who he had expected.

Instead of red hair, he saw blond. A templar stood by the grand stairs, talking to a trio of prostitutes. Suddenly, the lead woman, an elf,  burst into peals of mocking laughter. Her two companions joined in. The templar made a nervous gesture, raised his hand up and rubbed at the back of his neck. There was something familiar about the gesture, something familiar about the young blond templar. Samson’s gut clenched. He glanced back toward the door for escape.

“Let him in, Viveka.” A white haired, elegantly gowned woman  appeared just behind  the door-woman's shoulder, lightly laying a bejeweled hand on her arm. By her age and dress, Samson gleaned that she was the proprietress of the house. “You’re expected upstairs, Ser Samson.”

“Not a Ser any longer. Just Samson.”

“Messere Samson.” She corrected with a small, pretty smile.  Viveka flashed the madame an incredulous glance, suspicious, and her folded arms tightened across her bodice.

“First door on the left at the top of the landing.” The proprietress continued. “Shall Viveka lead you up?”

Samson looked at the stairs, at the blond templar standing there. Something hard and leaden settled into his gut. It was like running the gauntlet on the training field, only without armor or shield or sword. He just needed to move. Damn them all, no job was worth this!

But he knew that if he left now, he’d curse himself for a fool in the strained days to come. He needed the coin. He _always_ needed the coin.

He nodded to the proprietress and the door-woman, and made straight for the stairs,  his head bowed low. Walk fast, don’t look at him. Don’t look at his face. He knew that if he did, he would recognize the face.

In the Order, they told the recruits to be careful of the mages. They drilled it into them relentlessly.  A  kindly old woman could be a hardened bloodmage. A sweet-faced child could house a demon. Yet they never told you to beware of those in your own order, the spies and the turncoats and the men who pretended to be your friend while secretly reporting to the knight-commander. How had he ever trusted that fresh-faced Ferelden bastard?

_She has you on a leash, lad. Sure as shit._

Anger and misery warred within him, choking him with unspoken words. He wanted to bellow and launch himself at the templar.

_We were supposed to be friends._

He made it up the stairs without looking back, but for a moment, he thought he heard someone say his name.

Inside the room, two women sat, holding hands. One was older with long hair neatly coiled up and pinned with ivory combs. The other was younger; a girl, really, of perhaps eighteen years. She had the woman’s nose and mouth. They were mother and daughter, he realized.

The girl saw him first, and stood up from where she knelt beside her mother. The woman was slower to rise, but she looked apprehensive and clutched at her collar of pearls.

“You are Ser Samson?” The girl asked carefully.

“Just Samson.”

“But you’re him, aren’t you? The templar that was kicked out of the Order for helping mages?”

His jaw clenched reflexively, but he managed a tight smile. “At your service.”

The women exchanged a fervent glance, and the girl smiled, such a bright, warm smile filled with relief.

“You need help getting out of Kirkwall.”, he said.

“Yes,” the girl answered. Her mother was crying. “My name is Olivia.”

 

* * *

 

She ran a thumb absently over the rose-colored beads of the bracelet on her left wrist and smiled at him again; that same trusting, bright smile. They all looked at him like that, when they thought he would help. When he’d been in the Order, the mages had never smiled at him with such open gratitude. There had been sidelong glances, careful nods, hesitant overtures of friendliness all of it couched in fear. He had the reputation of being a _nice templar_ , but even then the mages of the Circle had treated him like a wild animal; a wolf that might be fed from the hand, yet there was always the chance that one day he might bite.

Olivia didn’t look at him like that.

She had none of the fear that a Circle mage might have of him because, to her , Samson was not her jailer. He was her guardian, her savior. He knew people in the undercity. He would get her out of Kirkwall.

The pair of them stood at the docks, the tepid water silver-bright under the light of the full moon. He watched their backs, while Olivia watched him.

“You arrived not a moment too soon.” She said, tugging one of the bright beads on her bracelet. “There was a templar around asking questions. I thought for certain that he was there looking for me. I thought that maybe--” her expression faltered, a deep rooted pain flickering behind her features. Samson knew what it was like when a memory threatened to overwhelm you. He didn’t press her, but waited for her to shake it off and continue at her own pace. “I thought that maybe my time was up. That he’d been tipped off and that I was bound for the Circle.”

“What was he there for, do you know?” Samson asked, looking down at his boots. His posture showed a relaxation he did not feel and his inquiry sounded surprisingly level, even to his own ears. It was a lie; a calm he did not feel.

“No, I only heard him announce his title, then I ran to my mother’s room.”

Samson nodded, swallowing hard. He would not ask what he wanted to know; he would not ask the templar’s name. He didn’t want his suspicions confirmed.

“I never did ask how your mother heard about the likes of me, up in the Blooming Rose.” He said, lightening his tone slightly. “Now seems as good a time as any.”

“Would it surprise you to hear that my father mentioned you?” She replied, twice as sunny with a smile to match.

“That depends on who your father is.”

“A templar, like you. Or like how you used to be. “ She amended sheepishly when she noted the flash of offense in his eyes. “When I told him I had it in mind to leave the city at last, I persuaded him to give your name. He said you might be sympathetic to a mage trying to escape the Circle.”

“And his name?”

“His name is Thrask.”

“Ah.” Samson laughed, a single puff of sound.

Though Thrask was a couple years older, the pair of them had been brought up in the same batch of recruits. Samson had considered Thrask a friend during those early years but they grew apart after their initiation ceremonies. Time inside the Gallows had changed them in ways they both understood but neither could not speak of. That was part of being a templar: that pact of silence.

Despite this, they had still sometimes ran maneuvers as a pair, like when they were being trained up. It was like reenacting a memory of their younger days. For a moment, Samson would feel as if no time had passed and they were still lads, laughing and slapping one another’s shoulders.

Neither of them were cronies of Knight-Commander Meredith, but such sentiments were dangerous. They were outnumbered, even among men and women whom they called comrades, and so they spoke very rarely as their years of service ran onward, for who knew what subversive things they might have let slip if they allowed themselves to converse with one another.  The silent understanding was enough. On occasion, during one of the Knight-Commander’s impassioned speeches, he and Thrask had met gazes over the heads of their comrades and it was enough to know that their hidden thoughts were shared by at least one other in the bunch.

For a moment, he had almost hoped young Cullen Rutherford would be a part of that silent fraternity, but Rutherford was scarred by his ordeal at Kinloch Hold, beyond the lingering proof of the scar across his mouth. After his transfer from the Ferelden Circle to Kirkwall’s Gallows, he was not particularly friendly even with others of the Order, keeping them at a distance with a fierce, single-minded dedication to his duty. And he’d made it clear that, to him, the mages were a duty. They were not people.

Rutherford’s unwillingness to make friends had only made Samson try all the more. He was young and sullen, wounded by his ordeal. Yet Samon saw him looking at the camaraderie of the other templars with a sick hunger. He wanted that companionship, yet stood back. Samson could understand that-- they had shared quarters after all-- and so he had taken it upon himself to draw the young man out.

_“Hey Rutherford, I think there’s a rat behind the bed. Help me move it?”_

_“Help you move it?”_

_“Humor me.”_

_“Hey Rutherford, do you know how to play Wicked Grace?”_

_“Of course I do. What do you take me for?”_

_“Well, I can't play to save my life but Warnold challenged me to a hand tonight and I couldn’t turn the smug bastard down. Let me practice with you.”_

_“Are you kidding?”_

_“Humor me.”_

_“Hey Rutherford, do you remember that song Ruvena was singing today? How did it go?”_

_“It’s midnight, Samson.”_

_“Humor me.”_

And he had. And they had almost been friends.

But after Samson had been cast out of the Order, he knew that he could not trust Cullen Rutherford. When the Knight-Commander had expelled him, when her words had fallen across him like a bludgeon, he had looked to Cullen, and the man would not even meet his gaze.

So much for friendship.

Freshly turned out onto Kirkwall’s streets, Samson had relied on that unspoken like-mindedness that he and Thrask had shared and wrote to him. He’d  begged Thrask for a little supply of lyrium. Small and steady, that was all he needed to tide him over. He had only sent one letter, and been answered just once: No. Thrask could not risk this favor. There had been no further word between them, yet now Thrask relied on him to smuggled his mage daughter out of the city.

“I didn’t know Thrask had a child.” Samson said archly. “Though it’s no surprise he didn’t  mention it.”

“That’s me, proof of my father’s impurity.” She laughed when she said it, though.

“Thrask wouldn’t be the first templars to wander into the Blooming Rose. It’s the worst kept secret in Kirkwall.” He shrugged. “It’s usually frowned upon, but they do it anyway.”

“Did you?” She asked, tilting her head at him curiously.

“No.”

“Did you want to?”

“I’ve never been interested in what the Rose is selling.”

The girl nodded thoughtfully, watching him for a moment longer in complete silence.

“How many times have you done this?” Olivia asked carefully, perching closer to the edge of the crate she sat on. “I mean, smuggled mages out of the city?”

“As many times as I’ve had the chance to.” Samson answered with the ghost of a smirk. “There’s no shortage of mages who want out of this cesspit.”

“Yes but, how many exactly?” She pressed, laughing a little. “Don’t you remember?”

“Why? Do you want to write a song about it?” Samson snorted. “I’d make a piss-poor hero in some tavern tale.”

“I think you have just the sort of spirit embodied in those tales!” Olivia lifted her chin, smiling defiantly. Samson decided that she had her father’s eyes. They were very blue, the sort of bright blue used to paint the inside of fine porcelain dishes. “You’re a single brave soul who helps those in most need, who reaches a hand out selflessly to aid the oppressed. That’s just the sort of hero a poet would write about.”

Samson snorted again, a little softer this time. “Your mother paid me to bring you to here, you know?” He turned to her, folding his arms across his chest, to see her sitting with her hands laced together over her knees, staring at him with the most intense, watchful expression. He smirked reflexively and she laughed.

“You see? You play like a mercenary, but you must care deeply. You must. You could have asked for any amount of coin, because of my mother’s job at the Rose, you could have demanded she pay much more. But you didn’t.”

“Now that you mention it, next time I might.”

“You wouldn’t!” Olivia shook her head. “You wouldn't price-gouge those in need, because that’s not in your nature. You are a hero, Messere Samson. My hero, at least, and you will be a hero to those you help after me, just like you’re a hero to those you helped before me.”

The poor girl really did think he was something, didn’t she?

Samson laughed, but it was a hard sound. She didn’t know him at all, yet there she sat, talking about him as if he were some character in a  3-copper novel. She didn’t know him when the lyrium dried out of his veins, when he shook and wept and prayed to the Maker that it would all stop. She wouldn’t have said these kind words to _that_ Samson. She wouldn’t look at him with such trust in her eyes.  

The sound of heavy footfalls echoed down the length of the quay. He cleared his throat, and Olivia popped up off the crate, clutching her the hood over her head with one hand.

“Well if it isn’t my greasiest and least dependable friend. You hadn’t brought us any fugitives for a while. We figured you’d finally been found out. Or someone had knifed you.” Reiner said with a smile. He swaggered when he walked, in such an exaggerated bow-legged fashion that Samson couldn’t help but think how easy it would be to kick his knees out from under him. At Reiner's back, two masked cronies followed, one with a bow and the other with a pair of daggers, both scanning the quay shiftily.

Truth be told, Samson didn’t much like Reiner. The man made a habit of spitting on the ground, and more often than not he hit the boots of anyone close by. It wasn’t just that, though. He had the oily, over-friendliness of a consummate bad liar. Samson knew the man would knife him in the kidney if the price was right, but he was a smuggler. To some degree, they all had that air about them, and Samson wasn’t exactly in the position to be precious about who he knew. Half of his life was dedicated to tracking down and appeasing Kirkwall’s smugglers.

Olivia peered at the three smugglers and ducked closer to Samson’s side, hovering there as if he were her shield.

“Is this the magey?” Reiner asked, stepping pointedly toward the girl, ogling her. “Hey there magey. Don’t you fret now. We’ve got a boat with your name on it.”

“You don't know my name.” She murmured, her voice very small and brittle.

“Why don’t you tell me, then, magey?” When Reiner smiled, he showed all his teeth, like a grinning skull. A pang of irritation went through him, but Samson said nothing.

“Olivia.” She said grudgingly.

“Well then, Livvy. We’ll get you outta town, won’t we? Quick as you please, quick and quiet.” He leaned back, fixing Samson with a haughty eye. Perhaps it was the light of the full moon, but tonight Reiner looked repugnant. His ever smile and eyebrow waggled made Samson want to smash a fist in his face.

“Now, where’s the coin for her passage?” Reiner grumbled, all of the theatrical kindness gone from his voice. He leaned in close enough for Samson to smell his rank breath and thrust his hand out at him, palm up. “I ain’t a charity.”

Samson met his eye for a moment, taking the measure of the smuggler, but this wasn’t a fight he could win. He either gave Reiner the coin, or they refused to take Olivia out of the city.

He’d promised to get her out, and that was a promise he meant to fulfill. Reluctantly, he reached into his shirt and pulled out the pouch Ambra had given him to buy her daughter’s safe passage. The little coin purse was red velvet and embroidered with the suggestive floral insignia of the Blooming Rose. Reiner saw it and gave a bark of laughter.

“Doing a bit of extra work on the side, eh, Samson? Not making enough smuggling mages out of Kirkwall?” He snorted, pocketing the coins Samson dropped into his palm. “I mean, you’re not my cup of tea but to each their own, I guess.”

Samson refused to be baited. “Take her out of here.”

“Oh come now, give us one of your winning smiles, Snaggletooth.  Or do I have to pay for that now?”

“You have your money, Reiner.”

“Fine then.” Reiner snorted, his good humor gone. He looked at Samson blankly, with the shark-like stare used to taking their measure of those around him. Turning away, he made a curt gesture to his cronies. “Let’s go.” He snapped at them. The masked men moved forward to flank Olivia, waving her impatiently forward. She hesitated and flicked a desperate glance toward Samson. The fear shone bright in her eyes.

“It’s alright. Go with them.” Samson nodded to the cronies. Still, she hesitated. “It’s alright, girl.” He told her more firmly. “Trust me.”

As he watched, some of the fear in her eyes drained away. He’d done that, drawn the fear out of her as if it were spider venom. She was just a child, and deserved to be less afraid. If he could do that with something as simple as a few words, he would. Fortified, she bravely stepped out from behind him and walked toward Reiner’s men.

“Come along, little Livvy.” Reiner called from down the quay.

“It’s Olivia.” the girl protested quietly, but she went with them anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Samson learns some unpleasant facts about his former associates.

For a week, Samson lived well off the coin Olivia’s freedom had earned him. He’d made enough on that job to buy all the fish-and-egg pie he could choke down and plenty of gulps of 5 copper ale. As long as he had a full cup, Norah would let him loiter inside The Hanged Man all night. He’d been comfortable or, at least, as comfortable as a man could be sprawled face down across a table in a drunk’s midden, but Samson had slept in worse places.

There were some interesting people whiling away their time at the Hanged Man these days. A Tevinter loan shark by the name of Senestra and her cronies had taken to drinking at the round table in the center of the room. When they got drunk, they got drunk quietly, and rarely spoke to any other patrons. Occasionally, someone would sidle up to the round table, wringing their hands.  Their desperate eyes and slouched shoulders told their tales. All of them looked as ragged as Samson felt.

No matter what, he couldn’t allow himself to make a deal with the loan shark. He had no collateral but his life and that wasn’t worth much these days.

Yet, despite the comfort of a full belly, despite the familiar burn of Hanged Man whiskey, and the relative safety of the indoors on a dark night, a familiar anxiety began to creep into Samson’s thoughts. Each time he laid out a copper, it crept closer. A copper gone, a silver gone, a sovereign gone. What would he do when he needed that money most, when he was clawing at his own skin in the dark?

This time he wouldn’t answer it.  He could slip the lyrium leash, he was certain of it.

By the next night, a tremor had started up in his knee.

 _Stop thinking about it, damn you_ , he told himself over and over again as the night dragged on.

Samson tried distracting himself by counting the hairs that connected Reagan’s dark brows above the bridge of his nose. Tonight, they were seated with some Antivan by the name of Vincento. Samson was fairly certain all Antivans were merchants or murderers. This one might very well be a merchant like he claimed. He was too squeamish to be an assassin.

“It is truly disgusting down here.”, Vincento was saying fastidiously. “I don't know how you can stand it.”

Tam snorted. “Oh, come on now. Kirkwall is beautiful in her own way.”, he said.

“Did you hear?” Reagan cut in, earning an annoyed glance from the Antivan. “There’s some Ferelden refugee ranging around the city, clearing out the street gangs. Been seen in Lowtown, in Hightown, even down in Darktown.”

“Ah yes, the refugee influx.”, Vincento replied, swirling his cup of ale as though it were a fine wine. “Truly, adding to Kirkwall’s beauty.”

“Lowtown, Hightown and Darktown? That’s some wanderer there.” Tam replied, ignoring the merchant.

“I heard Milk-eyed Malik had a bone to pick with the Ferelden for cleaning out some smugglers den.” Reagan continued. “He tried an ambush to set things straight, but then Malik and his whole crew got killed. The Ferelden is just that good.”

 “Are you certain he is Ferelden?” Vincento sniffed imperiously. “The business of killing is often the providence of the Crows. There are none better. If this was perhaps a calculated assassination--”

“Oh, the Carta wouldn’t be happy about that.” Tam muttered into his cup.

It took Samson a moment to realize what his companions were talking about and when he did, he sat up, fixing his full attention on them. It was the clearest his thoughts had been all night.

“Malik’s dead?”, he asked in a voice like crunching glass.

Tam and Reagan cast him a startled glance, as if Samson had just appeared there out of the veils of pipe smoke.

“You’re with us now?” Tam chuckled nervously. “You’ve been staring at the wall all night.”

“What do you mean Malik’s dead?” Samson hissed through clenched teeth, fists tightening over his trembling knee.

“You didn’t hear?” Tam blinked owlishly with his big, stupid bright eyes.

“I just spoke to the bastard  a few days ago.”, Samson insisted. “He was as alive and well enough then, as well as Malik usually is. Filled with piss and venom.”

“I don’t imagine he has any of either now.” Vincento mused.

Reagan flashed Samson a distinctly apologetic smile. With a nervous laugh, he scratched his bushy brow.

“You and Malik were friends?”, he asked.

There was a certain way he said it that grated on Samson’s nerves; a searching sort of way that meant he was looking for a tale.

“You bastards are like old fishwives with gossip, except fishwives actually work while they run their mouths”. Samson growled, and Reagan held up his hands in surrender. Neither Reagan nor Tam uttered a word as Samson scraped back his chair and retreated to a seat alone beside the smoky fireplace. Only the Antivan seemed confused.

“They were friends then, I take it?” Vincento said, only to be loudly shushed by both men. Samson was certain they’d tell the Antivan the whole sordid business later. The disgraced ex-templar, beholden to lyrium smugglers. What a tale. In Lowtown, everyone knew everyone else’s business. They just had the sense to keep their mouths shut if the truth could get them shanked.

Samson shouldn’t have felt so disappointed to hear of Malik’s death. They had never been friends. As was the case with many of the people he had become familiar with since his expulsion from the Order, his relationship with Malik was one of pure necessity.  It was not as if Malik had been the only lyrium dealer the Carta had in Kirkwall. The lower city was filled with them.

 _Void take him,_ Samson snorted. Malik wouldn’t be missed, certainly not by him.

He took the vial from his pocket, and tipped the last precious drops of lyrium onto his tongue.

 

 

* * *

 

After Milk-eyed Malik’s murder, it seemed Samson couldn’t walk ten paces without hearing more stories of that Ferelden refugee. The exploits of The Hawk were all over the lower city, traded between wary lyrium smugglers and cheered by the drunks at the Hanged Man. Samson was glad he had managed to avoid a run-in. Anyone puffed-up enough to give themselves a stupid nickname like The Hawk was best given a wide berth. Samson had problems enough to keep him up at night, without getting caught up in some stranger’s tavern-tale.

His joints felt slightly swollen, and sharp, needle-bright pains occasionally crackled through his limbs, following along the lines of his veins. When he closed his eyes, he could almost see spiderwebs of lyrium-blue light.

And now, his pockets were looking barren. He’d nearly spent all the coin he’d made facilitating Olivia’s escape.

“You need to buy something,” Norah blustered at him impatiently. “Or I’ll throw you out on your ear.”

“Here.” Samson grunted and slapped a copper on the table.

“ Ye ain’t got enough for ale.”

“Then piss in a cup. That’s got to be worth a copper.”

Norah made a disgusted sound and stomped away, grumbling under her breath. Samson put his head back in his hands, raked his fingers through his greasy hair.

Behind his eyelids he saw the flicker of blue again and remember the votary cups filled with liquid lyrium, of sharing the cup between his fellow templars, their lips tarnishing the edge of the silver vessel.

Taste of metal and ice, of the smell of pure air and a stinging cold mist rolling off the calm surface of the liquid. He wanted to sleep, but if he did, Norah would likely pick him up by the back of his shirt and walk him outside.

“Messere?” A quiet voice reached through his thoughts.

“What?” He growled without lifting his head.

He heard the chair across from him slide out and finally looked up. A boy sat across from him, fair skinned and freckled, with a long nose. He was wearing a hood inside, which Samson would have told him made him look suspicious if he was feeling in a more charitable mood. The boy seemed set on looking suspicious though. He flicked a furtive glance around the room, and kept riffling his hands inside his coat.

“You here to knife me or something?” Samson asked, narrowing his eyes.

“What? No!” Gasped the boy, pulling his hands out of his pockets and firmly setting them on the table. “I wouldn’t, I swear.”

The boy was tall, but built thin. “You’re likely four-stone wet, lad. I could pick you up and toss you in the fire like kindling.” Samson chest rumbled with a mocking, unpleasant laugh. “Why are you even talking to me?” Samson asked, propping his chin on his hand. It was easier to keep his head up this way. “Do I look like I have money for you?”

“I’ll buy you a drink. I have a few coins here.” He drew some coppers from his pocket and eagerly tossed them on the table. The jingle of coins made a dozen heads turn. Samson slapped his hand down on them.

“Take care.” He murmured. “You throw around money like that, and someone is going to think you have more under there.”

“I do.” The boy said, leaning forward.  At least this time, he has the wit to drop his voice. “Not much, but I do. I heard you could help me.”

“What makes you think I can help you?” Samson gave a lopsided smirk.

“You’re Samson, right? You have the contacts to get certain people out of Kirkwall.”

The sharp smile dropped away.

“ _How much?_ ” Samson growled impatiently, leaning on his elbows.

“What?”

“How much more do you have?” Samson snapped at him.

“10 silver.” The boy said. He had big eyes, and they were a little alarming, especially with the way he was looking at Samson now, with a humbling mixture of horror and hope. Sometimes circle mages had looked at him like that. It had always made Samson uncomfortable, that knowledge that someone could give up so much power with a simple glance.

Samson shook his head. “That’s not enough.”

“Please!” The boy hissed, leaping forward to catch Samson’s sleeve. Samson flinched away, and the boy fell back into his chair, clasping his hands together desperately.

“Please, messere.” The boy tried again, softer. A thin sheen of tears brightened his eyes. In the dim light of the tavern, they seemed to glow a little, like the eyes of a cat. “I have to get out of Kirkwall. My ma’s reported me to the templars. They’re looking for me.”

“It’s not that I’m not sympathetic,” Samson said, though there was nothing particularly gentle in his tone. “But I’m not in place to be taking you on for free.“

To his own ears, he sounded ugly and hard. It was the pain that made him that way, but the more he talked the more the boy’s face crumpled no matter how he tried to soften his words. “Look,” Samson said at last. “My contacts require paid passage out of the city. What you have there isn’t nearly enough.”

The boy’s eyes flashed with defiance. “How much then?”,  he asked sharply.

“50 silvers.” Samson replied.

“And where am I supposed to get that sort of coin?”

“Maybe you could start by going back to wherever you got that 10 silver.” Samson retorted.

“They said you could help me.” The boy hissed accusingly. “They said you helped mages.”

Pain had already frayed Samson’s patience, and now that thin thread snapped.

“Do I look like I’m running a blighted charity here?” He snarled with such force and fury that flecks of foam flew from his lips. “It’s money that does it, lad, not _good intentions_. No one is going to sail your worthless ass out of here for a warm fuzzy feeling. They don’t care about your humanity, or your well being. What they care about is the pay. Do you understand me?”

For a moment, the boy merely stared at him, overcome with slack-jawed shock.

“Do you understand?” Samson barked out, in that voice he had once heard echoing in the gallows training yard. It was a call that had templar recruits quaking in their armor. It broke the boy’s trance. He blinked convulsively, choked out what sounded like a “Yes” then covered his face with a long, pale hand.

Though he made no sound, Samson was certain the boy was crying. Samson breathed out a long sigh and let his fury go with it. He raked a hand back through his hair.

“I can’t help you, lad.” He said, softer this time. “Not the way you want. Not until you have 50 silvers.”

The boy nodded, but kept his head down. Samson tried not to watch as he wiped his eyes and running nose on his sleeve.

“Listen,” Samson sighed, fighting back the tide of pity that threatened to drown him. It would sweep him up and carry him away easily if he didn’t fight it. How many times had he felt that ache in his chest, that spark of pity. How many times had he been punished for that? And who had ever taken pity on him? Since the moment he’d stepped outside the Gallows, no one had shown him a bit of pity. He needed the money. His loyalty wasn’t free any longer.

“Listen,” Samson said again, more forcefully. “Keep your coin. Go to the docks. There has to be someone down there who will be willing to sneak you out of here for 10 silver.”

Sniffing, the boy looked up and finally met Samson’s gaze.

“Yes, messere.” He muttered.

“What’s your name, lad?”

“Feynriel.” The boy replied sullenly.

“Feynriel.”, Samson repeated. “That’s an elfy sounding name.”

“My mother’s an elf.” The boy snapped. Abruptly, he stood up, gathering his ratty green cloak around him. “Thanks for your advice, messere. If you don’t mind, I’d like my money back.” He thrust his hand out expectantly.

Samson hesitated then, against his better judgement,  dropped the coins into the boy’s palm. “Ask around for Reiner.”, he said quietly. “Tell him I sent you.”

Quickly, the boy pocketed the coin. He cast a guilty glance at Samson, his angry bravado faltering, then dove for the door.

He’d be robbed of every last coin before he even made it near the quays, Samson was certain of it. He wanted to feel sorry for the lad, but the pain was rising up in him again. He couldn’t concentrate, and he gave up trying. Folding his arms, he let his head fall into the crooks of his elbows.

_Ah, Olivia. What is it that you called me, a hero?_

_“You play like a mercenary, but you must care deeply. You must.”_

_I know what I am._

He almost nodded off again, but a drunk woman bellowing at the opposite table kept him awake. He opened an eye, but didn’t move. Samson was in no form to fight tonight. Luckily for him, the drunk was only a tiny woman with a big voice and an accent that marked her as Ferelden. She was waving a tankard above her head, raining ale down on herself and her drinking companions in her fury . “Damn Reiner to the darkest corner void! That sodding raider owes me 3 gold sovereigns!” She slurred.

“Pah, Reiner is small coin around here, my lady.” One of her companions, a red-bearded Kirkwaller, grumbled back.

“Ain't _small coin_ to me, ye arse.”, The Ferelden woman barked. “Those bracers were my only inheritance and that rat-bastard kept every coin. He’s a blighted raider and a no-good slaver, he is!”

Samson startled upright. He moved so suddenly, knocking the table leg with his knee, that the drunks looked at him. Norah had brought something while he was dozing and now it was all over the table, and his sleeve was wet.

“What did you say about Reiner?” The words ripped at the back of his throat like sandpaper.

“Blighted raider, no-good slaver, that’s what.” The woman spit on the floor. “He a friend of yours?”

For a moment, he felt disastrously lightheaded, flickers of light dancing on the edge of his vision.

“He's no friend of mine.”, Samson cut her off quickly. “But Reiner’s just a smuggler. He doesn’t have it in him to be a slaver.” Though Samson said it with conviction, he wasn’t at all certain it was true. He didn’t know Reiner that well, and what he did know chafed his nerves. Reiner could very well be a slaver. Samson just didn’t want him to be, because if he was, that meant Samson had made yet another terrible mistake.

“It ain’t a far leap from smuggler to slaver.” The red-bearded man snorted.

“But you’re certain?” Samson insisted, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. “How do you know?”

The woman took a long gulp from her tankard, squinting at him challengingly. “I sold my mother’s silverite plated bracers to pay that bastard take my brother out of the city, and Reiner tried to sell him to some Tevinter. My brother only got away because he knows how to swim, and hopped off the dock into the water. He smelled like sewage for a week, but at least he’s not off in Tevinter getting cut in some magister’s ritual.”

It felt as if all the blood had drained from his body. Maybe they noticed it, for the next woman spoke more gently than the first. She sat at the far end of the table, her large, bare arms folded in front of her.

“I unload crates at the dock.” She said in a calm monotone. “I heard a bit about Reiner when he first came in. Ship captain, wanted to be a smuggler. Only the Coterie doesn’t want him. They think he’ll be a liability. So he starts talking to the slavers instead. Like Jorn here said--” She jerked her chin toward the red-bearded man. “-- ain’t a far leap from smuggler to slaver. It’s just one sort of cargo for another.”

Samson took a step back, nodding farewell in silence. he thanked the trio for their time, then forced himself to turn and walk for the door as slowly as possible. He reached out with trembling hands and pushed the door open into the clammy night air.

He’d made a mistake. He’d made a horrible mistake. But he could still undo it-- part of it, at least-- if he found the elfy lad. If he could stop him in time...

Samson ran.

His legs were ungainly, weak and awkward as those of a colt and he stumbled over and over again. He had been a knight. He had held a sword and shield under the weight of plate armor and now he couldn’t even hold himself up.

“Feynriel!” He shouted into the dark. The only answer was the squeak of a rat, and the distant sound of a drunk laughing. Or perhaps sobbing.

Struggling to get his feet under him, he stumbled forward again, using the wall as his guide. It took a frustrating amount of concentration to put one foot in front of the other. He needed a draught of lyrium more than he needed air to breathe.

That thought glowed with frustrating clarity in his thoughts as his leg gave out. He slipped and tumbled down the stairs between the upper and lower Lowtown bazaar like a sack of twigs. Stone steps bit into his shoulder, his side, his thigh, and he stopped only when he struck his head on a loose chunk of street mortar at the bottom.

He lay there, chest rising and falling , as the night sky blurred above him.

For a moment, Samson almost thought he saw a familiar silhouette in templar armor standing at the top of the stairs, the Andrastian crest on her forehead sharp as a pride demon’s horns. An imperious voice dropped down on him, like a boot to the chest:

_You do evil without even trying, and cast a shadow over the entire Order.You have lost my trust, Raleigh Samson, and so you have lost the trust of every templar here. You are hereby stripped of your rank and title, and expelled from the Templar Order._

Impotent anger boiled up from deep within him.

“Get up.” He told himself. The words tasted like blood.

Then he fainted.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Samson buys lyrium off a Cadash, plays informant for a Hawke, then tries to remember what it was like to be a templar.

No dreams in the void, just darkness unraveling slowly into the throbbing pain that only wakefulness could bring.

He tried to move but someone was pulling on his arms. Cracking open an eye, he found himself lying on his back, arms stretched over his head, while someone was trying to tug off his jerkin.

“I’m alive, you son of a bitch!”, He snarled, flakes of dried blood cracking on his lips.

The beggar cast a look back at him. Her matted white hair was caught beneath a dingy kerchief, and her wizened face was mummified by sun and sea air. She had a bone ring through her nose. Boldly, she met his eye then gave the jerkin one last tug. Samson twisted onto his side and grabbed for her ankle, but she sidestepped him with a surprisingly agile hop, waving the jerkin above his head. She crowed with mocking laughter then turned and ran, cackling like a mad-woman while his jerkin flapped behind her.

Robbed by a toothless old crone. That was a fresh indignity.

By inches, he pushed himself up onto his knees, feeling across his face. There, a scratch on his forehead. And here, he’d bitten the inside of his bottom lip. He smoothed his hands down to his ribs to find the place where a bruise was spreading under his skin. The crone hadn't found his knife, at least. It was still tucked between his waistband and his undershirt. Good Kirkwall steel. The only thing of value he had left.

With great effort, he stood and immediately staggered, bumping nose first into the wall.

Breathe in, breathe out, and again and again, until he gathered the strength to look up at the sky.

Dark blue, but the stars were beginning to lighten and the mountains over Kirkwall were edged with dawn light. He’d lost Feynriel. If the boy had found his way to Reiner, there was no helping him now. As for Olivia and the others before her...

He couldn’t save them.

He wasn’t a templar anymore.

He let his stumbling feet guide him back toward the Hanged Man. It was natural now, and he didn’t need to look up, so he didn’t see Carr until he had nearly walked past him.

Carr must have heard Samson’s threat because Samon had not seen him in the tavern since the night the bastard tried to steal his boots. More remarkable, though, was that there was no sign of the weasley man or the boney woman who always trailed behind him. Carr was alone, singing to himself and swaying drunkenly as he pissed onto an alley wall. Samson paused to study the back of the man’s shaved head, the way his ears stuck out, the thick neck descending into the soft, broad shoulders. He certainly was a big bastard.

“Carr.”, He called.

“What?” The bastard turned, lazily tucking himself back into his trousers. Peering at Samson, he blinked blearily; took a step forward. “Who’s that?”

_I’m not a templar anymore._

Samson drew his knife.

“Take off your boots.”

 

 

* * *

 

He crossed the Lowtown market at noon and tossed a pair of mildly worn boots atop a neatly folded pile of low-grade Antivan silks.

“How much can I get for these?”

“Not on the merchandise!”, Vincento hissed in dismay, hurrying to pluck the boots up off his precious wares.

He held them up between thumb and forefinger as if they were drenched in fresh blood.

“Where did you get these?”, He sniffed, darting Samson a credulous look.

“Call them a gift.” Samson said the words with a smile that made the merchant visibly shiver. “How much are you willing to give me for them?”

“They aren’t exactly what my clientele are looking for.”

Samson tilted his head, looking slowly to the right, then to the left. “I don’t see anyone else here but me.” He said, spreading his arms.

The Antivan answered with a politely disingenuous laugh. “You have me there, my friend.”

Samson suspected that Antivans called their worst enemies _my friend_ while stabbing them in the kidney.

“These boots are used and quite plain, but in good enough shape. I can give you perhaps fifty coppers.”

“One silver”

“They are not worth a silver! I should drop the offer down to 10 coppers for your gall.”

“I’ll take the silver.” Samson jabbed a finger at the Antivan, flashing his crooked grin. “You drive a hard bargain. You must really be a merchant.”

“Do you doubt my credentials, messere?”, Vincento asked, setting the boots aside. He pulled an embroidered handkerchief from the pocket of his silk coat and began wiping his hands.

“All Antivans are merchants or assassins, right?”, Samson said.

“You’ve forgotten princes, my friend.”

“Well, you’re no prince.”

“I’m a prince of prices.”

Samson snorted. The Antivan dropped a silver into his palm, and Samson quickly crouched to secret the coin into his boot. When he straightened up, he flicked a hand back through his unkempt hair.

“You’re alright, Vincento.”, he said.

“That’s quite kind of you, my friend.” The Antivan answered with a polite half-bow.

Instinctively, Samson crossed his arms over his chest in the templar salute. It still came so naturally to him, yet the moment he realized what he had done he felt a hollow echo within his chest; the pain of a memory that his body held but that his mind wanted to forget. He turned to go.

“A minute more, my friend.” Something in the tone of his voice put Samson on the alert. Slowly, he returned to the shade of the stall’s awning. Vincento looked at him sidelong, though his hands smoothed idly over the pile of silks. “I wondered if a young man came to you at the Hanged Man, and perhaps...asked for help? It would be the sort of help that an ex-templar might provide for a mage.”

Absently, Samson worried at the the place where he’d bitten his lip last night. The flesh felt raw and tender, yet he kept jabbing at it with his tongue.

“And if I spoke to such a lad?”, He finally asked.

“I would tell you that I was questioned this morning by a Ferelden named Hawke who was very interested in that boy’s whereabouts.”

“The one everyone’s talking about? _The_ Hawke?”

“He insists that it’s just Hawke. No the required.”

“He’s high and mighty for a refugee, isn’t he?”, Samson muttered. “And why would the most talked-about thug in Lowtown deign to question you?”

“Because I might have sent the boy your way.”

A pained hiss of breath slipped between Samson’s teeth. _Damn you to the void_ , he cursed silently, though whether he meant it for himself or Vincento, he was not yet sure.

“How did you know the lad?”, Samson asked roughly.

For an instant, he remembered Feynriel’s bright, defiant eyes; the hope and pain mingled in that youthful face. He didn’t really want to know.

The merchant hesitated, just long enough for Samson to realize that whatever came next would be a lie.

“He is the son of an old friend.” A good lie, tried and true, but it did not help to banish that wisp of guilt that floated around the merchant’s head. “Were you, perhaps, able to lend him your assistance?”, Vincento asked without looking up.

Now it was Samson’s turn to lie. A few options flickered briefly through his thoughts, yet guilt held his tongue. Instead, he answered the merchant’s lie with a kind of truth.

“By now, the lad is likely on a fast boat with Kirkwall far behind him.”

 _A slaver’s boat, you blighted bastard_ , Samson’s conscience admonished, but the answer seemed to satisfy the merchant.

“Whatever you do,” Vincento said. “Be cautious, my friend. I was not joking about assassins. I have spoken with a few in my time, and this Hawke, he has the bearing of one. Behind the smile lies a dagger.”

Samson waited for the Antivan to say more, but was answered with a turned shoulder. Taking this as a dismissal, he stepped away from the stall and fled the Lowtown market on his long, thin legs as if a dog lord’s hounds were chasing him.

He had a few extra coins in his boot now and a vial of lyrium to obtain before he met his nemesis.

Nemesis?  _Ha._ That was melodramatic. This Hawke wasn't a nemesis of his. Hawke might be a name about Lowtown, but to Samson he was only that: a name. If he was looking for Samson, _well_ , Samson was a busy man. There was coin to be begged, lyrium to be bought. He could not slow down to grieve his mistake with Reiner, and he certainly couldn’t slow down to dread what his Ferelden refugee might do to him.

 

 

* * *

 

Malik wasn’t the only lyrium dealer in Lowtown. He was just the easiest to find. This was due to the fact that Malik was, to put it kindly, _stupid._ A smuggler's work was in stealth, and in seeming invisible. Grudge matches with Ferelden refugees were bad for a smuggler's livelihood in more ways than one.

In any case, Malik had dealt his hand and lost. Never play against a desperate Ferelden. Samson had learned that, too. Cullen Rutherford had taught him that, only Cullen had left Samson alive, for the most part.

The good smugglers were a little more difficult to find. It was like following a trail of breadcrumbs that was being picked at by crows.

The breadcrumbs lead to Darktown.

If Lowtown was Kirkwall’s tattered skirts, than Darktown was her shit-smeared underclothes. It was a glorified sewer, riddled with massive support pillars that hoisted the city overhead. There were more refugees in Darktown than anywhere else in the city, their homes made of stained cloth and rotting crates. Orphaned children, not clever enough to pick pockets, sat with glassy eyes and dirty faces watching silently as Samson passed. He heard ragged, wet coughing from within the tattered tents, and groans of pain. Occasionally, he would pass a refugee, a former soldier from the battle of Ostagar, missing half and arm or leg.

No one approached him. No one begged for coin.

Somewhere far away, for voices echoed down the drains and sewers funneled by a thousand dark tunnels, he heard a woman’s voice whisper somberly, _“Alone in the dark, and that’s how we like it.”_

All these bodies, and all that accumulated was loneliness.

Samson understood that.

He found and elf peddling poisons who directed him toward the harbor side of Darktown, where the ceiling dropped and the pillars became the timber beams that supported the piers. The salt water made everything stink of rotting wood, and at one point he passed what looked like the carcass of a pale bloated seal. Yet amid the stink, a thin thread of sweet smelling pipe smoke lured him on.

By the time he found the lyrium smuggler, he had almost gotten used to the smell but the meandering search in the dark had frayed his patience. His shoulders were hunched from pain and he had to keep opening and closing his hands so that he could get blood into them. They were cold and numb and felt like they belonged on a corpse.

The smuggler was sitting crosslegged on a barrel, staring out into the forest of moldy pylons. Somewhere beyond was the bay, but from where they stood under the docks, they had no hope of seeing it. A plume of blue-grey smoke snaked up from the pipe in her mouth and drifted over her head, the flare of embers as she puffed on the pipe the brightest light in that dark place.

“You sell dwarf-dust?” Samson’s voice crackled with disuse.

The dwarven woman plucked the pipe from her mouth and turned to look at him.

Realization struck Samson like an iron bar. This was the female smuggler who had been in Milk-Eyed Malik’s company the last night he'd seen the sleazy bastard alive.

Samson hadn’t been looking at her too closely last time. The green tattoo that quartered her face had distracted him so that he hadn’t really seen anything else except her smirk. And it had been dark, and the thirst had been on him, and hadn't been much thinking about the dwarven woman. But now that he had a good look at her, he thought she didn’t appear as old as he had previously believed. Under the ink, she looked like a teenage girl, with a ruddy-cheeked face splattered with pale freckles.

She seemed to recognize him too, and gave him the same smirk she’d given him that night outside the foundries.

“The templar, right?”, she asked.

“You’re alive.”, Samson said.

She flicked ash out of her pipe.“You sound disappointed.”

“I heard Malik and his crew were dead.”

“Oh, _they are_.”, She snorted. “Malik was left in so many pieces they couldn’t even find them all. Lucky for me, I’m not Malik’s crew.” She nocked the pipe into the corner of her mouth and hopped down from the barrel, boots thumping in the muck. Standing up, the top of her head only reached Samson’s ribs. She had ginger hair.

“I manage the lyrium deals for the Carta on the low side of town. If someone is selling it out of Darktown or Lowtown, they got it from me. My name’s Neave, of Clan Cadash.”

“Samson.”

“ _Just_ Samson?” She arched a brow at him. “One name, like ‘Andraste’? You must be famous around here.”

The thin thread of his patience shredded.

“I didn’t come for a friendly chat.”, he snarled in a voice he barely recognized as his own. “I’m hurtin’ here.”

She folded her arms curtly over her chest, her keen eyes slicing him from the top of his head down to the toe of his worn boots.

“Well, aren’t you charming.” She seemed less than impressed with what she saw, and Samson couldn’t really blame her. “But you aren’t talking to my tits and you haven’t tried to pinch my ass, so I guess you’re still better than half the bastards I’m used to dealing with.” She shrugged and let her arms drop back down so that her fists came to rest on her hips. “How much do you want, Just-Samson?”, she asked.

A bolt of pain shot down his shoulder and ricocheted through his arm. He clenched his trembling fist and tried to will the pain quiet. Neave Cadash stood silent, watching him like he was a bug twitching under glass. She had eyes like the knight-commander, all haughty and distant and a vivid blue like the color of lyrium.

_Focus, Raleigh._

Fumbling, he bent to reach for his boot. He didn’t want to sit down in the muck to take it off. These were the only damned clothes he had now, and he wasn’t about to ruin them in this midden. He’d be carrying around the stink for days to some. His balance faltered, and the dwarf girl reached out and caught him by the elbow. With a surprising amount of strength, and a gentleness he had not anticipated, she guided him to the barrel. He sat down, refusing to meet her gaze, and shucked off his shoe, shaking the coins out into his palm.

She took the coin then handed him a vial.

He tried not to take it from her with more reverence than it was due, but his hands felt like clay and he had to be careful. His fingers were clumsy and _Maker_ , he didn’t want to drop it, not after all the effort he’d gone through to get it.

“When you need more, you know where to find me.”, She said.

 _When_ , not _if_.

Provided he lived through his encounter with this Hawke fellow.

Yes, he knew where to find her. He only wished that he wouldn’t need more. But a man couldn’t pray a thing like lyrium-pain away, and it’s not as if the Maker was listening anyhow.

 

* * *

 

On more than one occasion, Samson found himself day-dreaming that he’d find a flask of lyrium left behind a barrel or thrown in a pile of discarded rags in an alley. He’d taken to rooting through the refuse he came across, picking through anything that looked as if it had been left recently. One of these days, he would find more than a broken shiv or a bottle of rotgut. That day was not today.

 _Yeah,_ it was easy to puff himself up and make vows about quitting lyrium for good, but that crumbled, bit by bit, as the thirst took hold. Lyrium wasn't something one could simply give up.The Order made damned sure of that.

When he was a recruit, Samson had heard of a senior templar who had died from lyrium withdrawal. At the time, he had thought it was merely to scare the rookies, but now, after he’d become intimately familiar with the dried out, twisted ache of lyrium withdrawal, he believed it possible. He believed it with every quaking muscle and stiff join in his body. The lyrium was stronger than him, _much stronger_ , and it would dry him into a husk and crack his brittle bones if he let it.

Samson had once thought of himself as a prideful man. Not pride to the point of foolishness, mind you. For him, it had always been the type of pride that had made him stand his ground during his templar initiation, even when his gut had twisted in alarm. But he had been so certain in his decision that he did not balk even when the hands of his honor guard came to restrain him. It wasn't the sort of pride that led one to make speeches, or speak out loudly about righteousness and the proper place of mages, but it had been there inside him as he had served. Pride had been both his backbone and the voice that cautioned him.

It was in part due to that pride that he begged for coin in Lowtown. There were certainly other ways of making money in Kirkwall. There were warehouse fights where winning by any means necessary was part of the game. Joining the Coterie or any number of street gangs was an option if an honest job was hard to come by. He knew himself ill-suited to all of these occupations, yet he would beg for coin.

There was a particular corner in Lowtown where he had the go-ahead from the local beggars to squat and heckle. It wasn't a very good place to beg, but he wasn’t so stupid as to think they’d give him prime real estate. Where he was, the only traffic who stumbled across him were those headed into the undercity, and few people went to Darktown with generous hearts and pockets full of coin.

He had never asked for this, had he? All he had ever wanted to do was serve to the best of his ability and now he was coughing in the damp Kirkwall backstreets with the smell of stagnant water drifting up from the sewers, begging for enough coin to by his next draught of lyrium.

He pulled the little flask from his pocket and brought it shakily to his lips, dripping in just a tiny bit of the precious substance. He hissed in pain as that cool burn seared his chapped lips, spread across his tongue and trickled down his throat. It lent him a much needed jab of strength, for when he heard footsteps approaching, he knew that it wouldn't be a stranger hurrying by.

This one came to him, this one sought him. Ol’ Vincento was good on his word.

A group of four came walking up the stairs from the docks. Samson looked at them from where he sat on a crate, considering their silhouettes. At least one of them looked familiar: a dwarf with an odd sort of crossbow slung across his back. Samson was certain he’d seen the dwarf before, not with the Carta but perhaps at the Hanged Man. That seemed right.

The one in the lead was the second shortest of the lot next to the dwarf and wore a dark hood drawn up over his head. He had the stature and build of a Lowtown market acrobat: broad shoulders, muscular arms and a narrow waist. But Vincento had said _assassin_ , and the descriptor had stuck. The Ferelden certainly moved like an assassin and had a very alert way of standing, as if listening for signs of an ambush.

Samson knew how to assess such men. He’d done it on the training field many times, and when he looked at the Ferelden all he could think was how outmatched he was now. If he had a meal in him, if he was in fighting-form the way he was back in the Order, he could have challenged them. But if they had come to kill him tonight, he knew he couldn’t offer much of a fight.

He’d been _a knight._ The body and the mind do not easily forget that.

Samson fumbled for his little flask of lyrium, shakily took another, deeper draught, and stood up.

“You must be the Ferelden refugee with the bird name.” Samson said with a smirk, sounding far more confident than he felt.

Standing, he was taller than the Ferelden by half a head. It gave him a hint of satisfaction, but then again, that might have been the lyrium kicking in.

“And you’re the retired templar with the lyrium addiction.”, Hawke replied. He had a smile hidden in his voice, and that tell-tale Ferelden accent.

“Retired? Pah!” Samson laughed, loud and harder than he had meant to. “Is that what they told you? You might consider your sources more carefully next time, big bird. ”

It was the Ferelden’s turn to laugh. Samson saw a flash of bright, straight teeth. Of course he’d have that sort of smile. “You didn’t deny the part about the lyrium addiction.”, Hawke said.

“All templars have a lyrium addiction.”, Samson spit back.

“Is that all it takes to be a templar?”

“Why?”, Samson snorted. “Do you have it in mind to join the Order? I don’t think you’d get along with Knight-commander Meredith. She doesn’t like it when her knights bark back.”

Behind him, still waiting on the stairs, one of Hawke’s companions (a woman) was juggling a pair of knives.

“I didn’t think templars could retire. Unless they died.”, Hawke said.

“I didn’t retire. It’s a lie. A pretty lie, but still a lie.” The words tasted bitter on Samson’s tongue. “And I might still die, sooner rather than later, depending on why you’re here.”

“Oh, now you’re just looking for a reason to be pessimistic.” Hawke waved a hand dismissively, a low chuckle seeping out from beneath his hood. “I’m not here to kill you.”

“Hard to believe a man who won't look in the eye.”

Hawke hesitated for a moment, then reached up and flicked back his hood. “Better?”, He asked with a grin.

Brown skin, black hair smoothed back into a braid, and gold eyes. He wore a five-day's growth of beard, and had rather distinct tattoos that curved down across his cheeks, looking for all the world like tear-tracks left in smudge kohl. The combination of features reminded Samson of the Rivaini countrymen he’d seen in Kirkwall. A Ferelden with a bird name who looked Rivaini. An odd bird, _indeed._

“Don’t go falling in love with me, now.”, The Ferelden said. “This is strictly business.”

“You don’t need to worry about me falling in love with anyone, least of all you, big bird.”, Samson retorted. He couldn’t decide whether or not he liked the man yet.

“Down to business then?”, Hawke laughed. “I’m here because the same man who told me you were a retired templar also told me you would be the person to ask about apostates escaping Kirkwall.”

“And who was this man?”

“Some templar.” It felt like falling, only with his feet on the ground. “Did the templar have a name?”, Samson asked stiffly, trying not to seem too interested. Hawke shrugged his shoulders. “Thrask?” He phrased it as a question.

That wasn't the name Samson expected. For a moment he had hoped, dreaded…

“Thrask?”, He echoed, feeling that cold numbness leak out of his bones.

“That sounds about right.”, Hawke said with a nod. “Why a templar would know such a thing and hide it from his superiors, I can’t begin to guess, but he said you might be counted on to smuggle apostates out of the city.”

“Oh, I tried.” Samson’s voice crackled a little, thin and suddenly insubstantial. Guilt might get the better of him, if he did bear up. He cleared his throat. “Did Thrask send you out looking for someone? Tracking a mage for him, perhaps?”

“I’m not working for the templars.” Hawke smirked. “The templar was just a lead I was following. I’m actually looking to reunite a mother and her son.”

“Elfy name. _Feyn_ -something.”, Samson said, pretending the name didn’t mean as much as it did.

Hawke perked up slightly, smile vanishing, his gaze fixing on Samson with a birdlike intensity.

Samson glanced away, drawing a deep breath of the stagnant night air. One of Hawke’s companions laughed, softly. A flicker of flame, like the kind a mage might summon, flared up in someones hand, then died. He faintly heard the sound of water sloshing in the canal below, and felt within him that twist of sympathy that he knew he would regret, but that welled up within him like a silent cry. It was the echo of anger at what he had allowed to happen, everything that he had allowed to happen.

If Hawke was as good as everyone said, he could kill Reiner. He could do what Samson knew he was no longer capable of doing. Or at the very least, he could find out what happened to the lad, and to Olivia, who had looked him in the eye and called him a hero.

“I know where you might find the lad Feynriel.”, He said.

Hawke stepped closer.

“Where?” The smile was gone from his voice.

Samson told him.

 

* * *

 

He’d gotten good at walking lightly. It was much easier to do when he wasn't bogged down with armor, and Hawke and his companions had a habit, it seemed, of speaking loudly and arguing companionably among themselves as they walked. It was a constant drone of noise, almost as if they couldn't bear silence. It made it easier for Samson to follow them at a distance, snaking around corners, waiting tucked into an alley until they moved on.

He followed them until they were by the quays where Samson had always met Reiner, just as he had told Hawke.

They paced around one of the warehouse doors until Hawke, his hood pulled back up, walked over and lightly pushed it open.

Samson sat on a crate, folded his legs up, and sat there like a spider, waiting.

A cat yowled in an alley.

He wanted to go inside. He wanted to see if Hawke found Reiner, wanted to see what the Ferelden would do to him. If Reiner was butchered like a pig, Samson wanted to see it with his own eyes. But cowardice kept him seated on the crate, watching the warehouse door.

Some time later, the warehouse door slammed open again and out bounded Hawke, crowing loudly. His companions followed, laughing and merry as if they were on their way back from a festival.

And they were all flecked with blood.

Samson slid off the crate and shuffled into shadow, crouching there until they passed. He waited, breath held, until the sounds of their talk faded. Then he walked down the quay and to the warehouse door.

They had not closed it behind them, and it hung ajar slightly, a bloody fingerprint glistening on its edge. He nudged the door open with his knuckles and slid inside. He drew the dagger out from under his shirt and held it ready, low and out in front of him, it’s keen edge leading him through the dark. The air smelled of salt, damp wood. Barrels and crates, some with mouldering ropes holding them together, were stacked up against both walls, forming a narrow passageway. Ahead, he could see moonlight, and followed it out into the warehouse proper. It was empty, save for the accumulated cargo of a dozen forgotten boats. Down a stone incline to the left, the side of the warehouse opened up onto wooden piers that jutted out into the water of the bay. A single schooner was docked. Reiner’s smuggling boat, he supposed.

He nearly called out a challenge then, but though Reiner’s name was caught between his teeth like a curse, he remained silent. The dark hair on the back of his forearms prickled as he smelled, above the dusty mildew and salty water, a whiff of burning ozone, a scent he had come to recognize as the presence of the Fade often left behind after a strong feat of magic.

He followed the scent, and found a trail of blood. In the moonlight, the small dark drops on the ground looked like ink. Carefully, he stepped over them, walking along beside the trail. There was no sound, save for the ragged rasp of his own breathing. He entered the back room, where the smell of magic was the strongest.

Reflexively, he drew on the little lyrium he had within him, feeling it buzz in answer, when once it would have rushed and roared. He didn’t know if he could dispel anything as we was now. He tightened his grip on the dagger and stepped into the storage room.

A corpse lay sprawled face down just inside the door. The arrows from the quiver on her back had spilled out across the floor and he had to walk carefully not to slip on them or on the blood pooling dark around her. Samson didn't recognize her, but he recognized the clothing, as he did the clothing on the next three bodies he found. These were Reiner’s lackeys.

He realized at once why the smell of magic was strongest here. Further back in the long narrow room was a massive hulk of gangrenous flesh. It looked like the skinned carcass of a cow hung up at the butcher’s, except for the bulging shoulders, long, twisted arms, claws. It was an abomination. He had seen once before, at a mage’s failed Harrowing. Now it was dead.

Thin shreds of clothing draped over the bloated corpse. Samson knelt down close to it, though his stomach churned. He reached out and touched one of the shreds: the embroidered corner of a woman’s blue gown.

_Not Feynriel._

He tucked the knife back under his clothing and started to stand up. His knees creaked like an old man’s. Samson hissed in pain and remained crouching for a moment longer, staring at where one of the abomination’s meaty hands curled against the floor. A glimmer caught his eye. He reached over and then hesitated, his hand hovering over the sour flesh. There was a bracelet around the abomination’s left wrist.

Rose colored glass beads.

 _Trust me, girl,_ he had said. And she had. She had trusted him completely.

Maddox had trusted him too.

He couldn’t get the bracelet off over the misshapen hand, so he cut it free, careful not to lose any of the beads.

Reiner lay dead with his knives gone and his pockets turned out a few feet from the ruin of Olivia’s body. Samson spit on him as he left.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Samson meets Serendipity, and faces a mother's wrath.

_This time, he dreams of a small paper bird. He is trying to fold the paper bird into existence, but the mail gloves on his hands make it trying work._

_“Why don’t you take those off?”, asks a low voice across from him. Samson recognizes it but refuses to look up._

_“No,” he says firmly. “I need to keep all my armor on. Even the smallest piece. I might need it.”_

_“You don’t need it around me. We’re old friends, aren't we?”_

_“Yes.” But Samson doesn’t take off the gauntlets. He doesn’t look up._

_Hands reach across the table toward him, broad palmed, short fingered. There is a pale scar that runs from the crease of the thumb down across the palm; not a cut, but a burn. Samson knows where it comes from; from accidentally laying a hand against a hot iron as a child. It’s a smithing wound, the type a child who has grown up near a forge might have._

_“Let me see that,” the smith’s hands say to him. “I’ll show you.”_

_“No,” Samson breathes, gripped by a sudden indescribable terror. “I can do it.”_

_The hands still slide the paper away._

_Samson rocks back in his chair, knotting his gauntleted fists together in prayer._

_“Don’t.” He tells the smith’s hands. It’s the only prayer he can offer. “This won’t end well for either of us.”_

_Samson wants to shout, to stand and shove the table over and bellow at the top of his voice:_

“I will not do this. I will not. This time, I can say no. I can change it.”

_But here was one of those dreams where one’s tongue is held mute, where limbs and hands will not obey. He sits helpless as the smith’s hands lay a paper bird on the table before him atop a small sealed packet of letters._

I won’t do this.

_Samson looks up. He sees the sunburst symbol, the mark branded into the foreheads of Tranquil mages._

_He has already failed._

 

* * *

 

He woke shivering, cold despite the way his threadbare shirt clung to his skin.

Humid nights were a staple of summer in Kirkwall. It was all the heat trapped in the stones, and in the slow moving canals that crisscrossed the lower city, green and fetid. The biting-gnats bred there, and sometimes one might find a body floating, face down, among discarded bottles and bits of unwanted debris.

His grand dam’s cough had sounded different on summer nights, rough and phlegmy. When her cough started to change to a dry, whistling sound, that was winter on it’s way. As it got worse, he would try to nurse her, and she would grow frustrated at her own infirmity and send him outside.

_Leave me be, Raleigh. I’m not some old nag who needs to be hand fed._

She was, but Maker help him if he told her so.

The smith across the street had a son, a few years younger than Samson. They’d gotten along well. There had never been anything particularly strange about the smith’s boy. He’d liked birds.

After grand dam died, and Samson realized that being a templar was his only way to keep himself from becoming a bloated carcass in a Lowtown canal, he thought that he wouldn’t see the smith’s boy again.

That changed when, just after Samson had undergone his formal initiation into the Kirkwall Order, he’d seen his childhood friend led into the Gallows courtyard.

Samson hadn’t recognized him at first.They had not seen one another in a few years, and the pair of them were older. Time had reshaped them from children into men. And the smith’s boy hadn’t been a mage. But now he was a mage, and he looked at Samson with an odd mix of trepidation and hope, like he wanted to remember when they were younger and called each other friend. Samson had wanted to remember, too. Now he wanted to forget.

The only memories he had of Maddox were laced with guilt and pain.

It had been Samson’s responsibility to protect Maddox, not just because it was a templar’s duty to protect mages _even from themselves_ , but because they had been friends.

From his cell in the Gallows, did Maddox still think of birds? He certainly wasn’t plagued by nightmares. The Tranquil couldn’t dream.

Still shaking, Samson uncurled himself from where he has spent the night, flinching as the pain in his hip slowly subsided. The pommel of his knife had been pressed up under his ribs and had left an indentation there, one that was sore to the touch like a bruise. Around the hilt, he’d tied the string of rose-colored beads that had belonged to Olivia.

He’d been contemplating selling them. His belly had been empty for two days and he needed the money, but he didn’t think he could go back to Vincento, not until after he knew Feynriel’s fate.

Reagan and Tam might have heard something. Perhaps if he went back to the Hanged Man…

There was a breeze that night, and it made the chain holding up the tavern’s namesake creak as the giant effigy swung slowly back and forth above the door. As he reached for the handle, it was unceremoniously tugged from his grasp. The door swung abruptly inward and someone in a cloak came barreling out onto the street. A bony shoulder clipped Samson’s bicep, driving a grunt out of him. He staggered, and only just managed to catch himself on the doorframe.

“Watch yourself!”, he snarled but the bastard kept on walking.

“Samson, there you are!”, Corff called to him from behind the bar, a pale, round face in a haze of smoke. It was hot and stagnant inside, but Samson rubbed his arms through his shirt, willing warmth back into them. “You’ve just got another letter here”.

“What?”

“I think it was that elf again, same from last time. He ducked in and out real fast. Just left it on the bar and went. I recognized a patch on the hood this time, though. A rose, I think?”

Samson crossed to the bar and picked up the scrap of paper. He saw the blue ink again, but the handwriting was not as stately as last time. The pen strokes were quick, smeared in places, and one corner was water-stained.

_You rat-faced bastard_ , the letter read. _You sold my daughter to slavers. May you rot in the void._

“How long ago?” The words felt like a mouthful of gravel caught the back of his throat. He coughed, and it was the sound an old woman might make on a cold winter night.

“Just now”, Corff said, blinking owlishly. “He was on his way out, as you were on your way in.” He pointed toward the door.

_The elf he’d bumped into outside._

Samson crushed the letter in his palm, threw it behind the counter and ran for the door.

Ahead, he could see the messenger, cloak flapping behind him as he rushed for the stairs up to Hightown.

“Wait!”, Samson shouted. The word either went unheard or unheeded. The elf didn’t stop. Samson snarled a curse, launching himself after.

His knees ached in protests as he drove himself him the stairs, two by two.  The messenger was fast. Samson’s stride was longer. He overtook the elf and grabbed hold of his shoulder with a surge of triumph, spinning him around.

The messenger snarled a string of unintelligible profanity and raised a fist in defense, freezing just before the knuckles hit their mark.

Samson got a good look at the elf now. He had pale white skin, dark brown hair, and doe-like eyes that reminded Samson, uncomfortably, of the glass eyes set into the stags heads noble’s mounted above their  fireplaces. The snarl of contempt that the elf wore remained frozen on his face.

“You’re from the Rose?” Samson’s breath rattled in his chest more than he would have liked. “You delivered the letter?”

“Yes”, the elf replied defiantly.

“Ambra knows what happened to Olivia?”

“Someone sent her a letter from the Gallows.”, the elf snapped back. “Don’t ask me who.”

“It was Thrask.”, Samon said his old comrades name with such force that a fleck of spit flew from his teeth and hit the elf’s cheek. The elf didn’t even flinch, but kept his large dark eyes locked on Samson’s face.

“Oh, aren’t you clever.”, he purred threateningly.

“I know who Thrask was to Olivia.”

“Are you planning on blackmailing him? I can’t help you with that.”

The elf’s entire body tensed, and Samson saw in that tension the stillness of someone preparing to lunge. It was a tell that a warrior might notice, something he’d been trained to look for in a sparring partner or potential  adversary. Samson simply released the elf’s arm.

Surprised, the elf stumbled back. Then, with an odd little flourish, he swept his cloak tighter around him. For a moment,  he glared hard at Samson, then spun on his heel and started back up the stairs.

“I didn’t know about Reiner.”, Samson called after him. The stone walls caught his words and tossed it back and forth mockingly. There was a roughness in his voice that revealed more than he wanted it to.

The elf didn’t stop his ascent. Samson followed him up to Hightown, not skulking like how he had followed Hawke to the warehouse, but walking behind. Once or twice, the elf glanced back, fists clenching handfuls of his cloak.

“Stop following me!”, he hissed.

“Just let me talk to her, that’s all I ask”, Samson called back. “I owe her something, an apology-”

“And you imagine that’s going to bring her baby back?” The elf laughed mirthlessly. “That girl was a bloody ray of sunshine and now she’s dead. We all trusted you. You were supposed to be one of the good ones, but in the end you’re worse than one of them. You’re just a lyrium addled liar and a thug!”

Yes, that was exactly what he was but he hadn’t always been like this. That old anger surged up inside him like bile.

_He hadn’t always been like this._

“There is nothing you can say of me that I haven’t already said of myself!” The words tore out of him, too loud for the sleeping city. A light went on in one of the nearby townhouses. He heard the clank of approaching guardsmen, and quickly dodged behind a potted pine. The elf trotted forward without him, leaving Samson standing there in the shadows, trying not to breathe.

“Thought I heard something,” one of the guards was saying.

“Some sot on the way back to his family mansion from the Rose”, her partner said dismissively. The two women idled  there for a moment longer, the first peering at the manicured shrubs. Then they left. When Samson crawled out from behind the planters, he saw that the elf had stopped beneath the sign of the Blooming Rose and was waiting for him.

Even at night, there were small clusters of men and women loitering in the plaza outside the Blooming Rose. The lanterns glowed with soft pink light. Under that eerie light, Samson’s pale, knotted hands looked as if they were drenched in blood.

The elf folded his arms over his chest and leaning back against the wall, propping one foot back on it. He looked at Samson from under lowered lashes, his dark eyes appearing almost entirely black.

Why had he waited?

“I know what you all think of me, and I deserve it. I do.”, Samson muttered. “I never wanted anything bad to happen to that girl. She was-” His throat closed on the words. He swallowed hard, but it didn’t help.

_She was kind_ , he wanted to say. _She thought better of me._ Unable to speak, he reached into his shirt and fumbled for the  bead bracelet wrapped around the hilt of his dagger. Shaking, he held it out in his dirty palm.

The elf slowly straightened up off the wall. “Where did you get that?”, he whispered.

“If I can’t give this to Ambra, will you give it to her for me?”, Samson asked.

The elf reached out as if to take it, then quickly snatched his hand back, hiding it under his cloak. He sniffed and tip of his nose wiggled slightly, like a rabbit’s. At another time, Samson might have laughed at that.

“Follow me”, the elf said.

Samson followed him inside. Good o’l Viveka stood guard beside the entrance to the main room. She looked at Samson, but merely nodded to the elf, letting the both of them pass without a word.

“You try anything,” the elf said quietly. “And I’ll let Viveka man-handle you out the door. And believe me, you won’t find it pleasant. That big girl knows at least ten different ways to dislocate a man’s spine, and I’m sure she’d like to discover an eleventh.”

He led Samson to the grand staircase then muttered, “Wait here”. Without another word, the elf rushed up the stairs without him.

Samson stood by the banister, the sweet perfume that filled the room making him nauseous. All at once,  the sound of soft laughter and tinkling wine glasses was too loud for his ears. He couldn’t be sick here, not on the blighted pretty carpet. This was another stupid mistake. He shouldn’t be here.

“I’ve had three templars already tonight.”, someone at the nearby table was saying. “I don’t know why and I don’t think I want to know.” Samson looked over. It was a dwarven man who was speaking. He sat with two other men, both human, all three of them dressed in the fine garments worn by all the Rose’s workers. The dwarf noticed Samson’s glance, and smiled out from under his beard, raising his glass. Samson looked away. He scanned the room for the familiar armor, thought he saw someone sitting in the far corner and he felt his stomach turn.

“Go up.” An elven woman appeared on the step above him, clothed in a pink dress.

He was about to offer a protest -“ _I’m not here for that_ ” -when he realized: the pale skin, the dark brown hair, the dark eyes. It was the elven man, wearing a gown and face powder, with his hair pulled back into two tails. Samson realized at once that he had seen this elf before tonight. On the night he had answered Ambra’s first letter, this had been the elven woman who had distracted Rutherford while Samson and Olivia had talked.

“Have you changed your mind now, sugar?”, the elf asked snidely. In that one phrase, Samson heard the elven man’s voice; a frank, guttersnipe accent without the theatrics and the flourish. Samson shook his head forcefully, then reached for the railing. He used it to drag himself up the stairs, clutching Olivia’s bracelet tightly in his other hand.

The door to Ambra’s room was not locked.

He stepped into the dark and gently pulled the door closed behind him, leaving him sealed in the cell. A single candle burned on the table, and beside it sat the shape of a woman. Samson recognized her in the dim light because of the ivory combs in her hair. Her face was almost entirely engulfed with shadow, and her eyes were like the gaping pits in a skull’s face.

“Messere Ambra,” he said, stepping toward her. She looked up, her eyes a blade-flash in the dark. He froze, meeting that gaze.  Seeing the ferocity in them, he moved toward her despite he warning flickering in the back of his mind. “Messere Ambra, I am-”

She struck hims so hard, his head snapped to the side. The rings that she wore on every finger left red brands on his cheekbone. He staggered back, barely catching his balance, but managed to recover enough to look her in the eye.

“Did you know?”, she asked breathlessly, her shoulders rising and falling with strangled sobs. “Did you send my  baby to those monsters?”

Samson tried to open his mouth. His jaw creaked, and the words barely came out. “I knew Reiner was a smuggler, not that he was a slaver”, he told her. “If I had know, I wouldn’t have taken your girl Olivia to them. I wouldn’t have taken any of the ones I helped escape to him. Do you imagine that I haven't thought of them, what happened to them, messere? That weighs on me-”

“Oh, _poor_ templar!” Ambra cut him off, laughing loudly, wildly, mercilessly. Tears streamed down her face, bringing with them rivulettes of kohl. “Shall I weep for your gentle soul? How hard it must be for you to sleep at night!”  She wheeled back, clutching her lace shawl around her shoulders. “My girl is dead, my bright girl.”

The beads in his hand were digging into his palm. Carefully, he uncoiled his fingers from around the bracelet.

“I brought you this”, he said numbly.

It was like when he was a templar again, standing watch at a door or in a common room: seeing the mages walk by talking or arguing, sometimes crying. He would see them at their lowest. They would forget he was there, the statue in silverite armor. When they thought they were alone, they allowed themselves the slip of pure joy, the sob of utter despair, that they would never have let another soul see. He had been there for those moments and he was there now, witnessing Ambra’s pain. It was something he has no right to see, but she wore it on her face so baldly as she came forward and took the bracelet from his grasp.

She cradled it in both her hands, the flash of her tears falling in the dark reminding him of when a mage summoned a little flame to light a candle. Her lips twisted into a pained smile.

Then she looked up at him. The smile was there, then gone, and he saw a cold fury seep into her eyes. She balled up her hands, the bracelet clutched fiercely in one of them, and launched at him with a shriek.

He took the first volley of blows, letting her strike him over and over again. They were fierce, but weak. When she did not stop, when one of her rings sliced open his cheek and the cut felt keen and sharp, he realized she mean to beat him to death. Samson caught her by both wrists and held them firmly, a thin trickle of blood itching along his jaw. She wrenched against his hold, but he didn’t let go.

“Get out!” She screamed, slamming her forearms forward into his chest. Still, he didn’t let go.. “Get out! Get out, you lyrium-fiend! Get out!”

Samson twisted Ambra away from him, then shoved her back, releasing her hands. He made a dash for the door, though she came after him with claws bared, snagging a few strands of his hair. He flung the door open, then kicked it closed behind him. She did not pursue him into the hall.

Breathing hard, he reached up to wipe away the blood on his jaw. He ran his fingers back through his disheveled hair and walked down the stairs. His hands were shaking.

The elf stood on the last step, poised elegantly beside the banister.

“Did you say what you came to say, sugar?”, the elf asked sweetly, not in the voice Samson had heard before but a decidedly feminine tone. It was as if he was speaking to an entirely different person and he had the hysterical thought that this woman was not, in fact, in any way connected to the elven man he had followed here.  But that wasn’t true. No matter how she looked now, this woman and that man were the same person. Still, Samson met the elf’s dark-eyed stare, and she gave a smile like ice.

He stopped beside her, which seemed to surprise her slightly.

“I didn’t get your name”, Samson said under his breath.

“When I’m dressed like this,” she replied, gesturing down the length of her gown. “It’s Serendipity.”

“And when you’re not?”

She gave a brittle laugh. “We aren’t friends enough for that.”

Samson nodded. _Not friends enough for that._ It seemed he didn’t have many friends nowadays, and fewer as each night passed.

He left the Rose.

In the dark, in the damp of Lowtown, he shivered and coughed and let the lyrium-pain wash away the names of those he had wronged.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Samson remembers the Kirkwall Gallows, and the incident that lead to his expulsion from the Order.

 

Meredith had been a terror as a Knight-Commander, but she hadn't _always_ been knight commander.

During Samson’s first years in the Order, the Knight-Commander was a man by the name of Guylian. Though Guylian and Viscount Threnhold were constantly at one another’s throats, Samson remembered Guylian as an encouraging, robust man, who treated every knight in the Order as though they were his favorite child.

Samson had a vivid memory of one particular summer day, when the Kirkwall sun baked the stones of the training yard until sweat dampened the hair beneath his helmet and dripped into his eyes. He had made a game of seeing how many of his fellow templars he could spar before he dropped, because he was only recently knighted and the lyrium made him feel like twice the man he was, with twice the strength to prove.

He had fought through his comrades-in-arms until his body was aching and his shield arm was bruised, when a last opponent stepped out to challenge him. The other man stood straight, and so Samson pulled himself up and saluted. His fellow templars roared in applause as swords flashed and shrieked in the afternoon air.

Even a few mages snuck out to watch from the shadows of the pillars.

His opponent’s sword rent Samson’s shield so that Samson was left defending himself with his blade alone. But in the end, it was Samson who knocked his opponent flat. When he reached down to help the defeated templar up, the man stood and took off his helmet. It was Knight-Commander Guylian.

Guylian himself had given Samson a replacement shield, a fine piece of work with the Chantry sunburst blazing at it’s center. It was Samson’s official templar shield and he had earned it with pain and sweat, and a good dose of pride. He had carried that shield with him, not just on his arm but in his heart.

_Until the Viscount Threnhold had Guylian arrested and killed._

_Until Meredith had led her coup to kill Threnhold in return._

Samson was not invited to that overthrow. Meredith took only twelve of her most trusted templars on that mission, and with it she had avenged Guylian, earned herself the promotion to Knight-Commander, and crushed all of Kirkwall under her heel.

Meredith was a senior templar by the time Samson had joined the Order, and she was by that distinction set apart from Samson and his peers. She ate apart, walked apart, had different guard posts. Very little Samson did in those first years had put him in any contact with Meredith. The truth was, only other senior templars had any opinion of her. She was not overly friendly to the novice knights. She did not socialize with the recruits. The first time he heard her speak was on the day she was made the new knight-commander by Grand Cleric Elthina. He spent nearly ten years, five of them as a recruit, under Knight commander Guylian. He then spent the next ten under Meredith’s boot, along with all the other templars and mages  of the Gallows.

In that time, Maddox had come to the Circle.

Samson couldn't blame his being expelled from the Order on Maddox, though. In the end, there was really no other way it could have gone with Meredith in power. She reshaped the Order with her every new edict, and the Gallows became a place of hushed whispers for all who resided there. Samson would not have done well there much longer, even disregarding the incident with Maddox.

At least, that is what he _told_ himself.

In the end, it was the letters that did it, and Samson was turned out as if almost two decades of service meant nothing.

He was left with the hunger and the lyrium thirst, and the burning memory of the friend he had failed because he had not been strong enough to say no.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The memory of Maddox was a scar. If he pulled too much one way or twisted too much the other, it would snag.

Pain _, that_ was remembering.

_Remember._

Samson smiled with all his crooked teeth. It was a baring of fangs; a distraction. He smiled often when he was unhappy. He smiled _the most_ when he was unhappy.

Maddox’s smile was rather timid, closed-lipped but hopeful. He’d had a chubby face as a boy but as a young man, his jaw had squared up. He had round, ruddy cheekbones that looked like apples; perfectly suited for a grin.

But he had never smiled like that.

 _Rather timid. Closed-lipped. Hopeful._ He smiled with his eyes. All you needed to know about him was in his eyes.

When the templar guard led Maddox into the Gallows for the first time, Samson saw fear in those eyes.  Samson studied the unhappy apostate as he shuffled across the stones, wondering why the mage looked so familiar.

“Oh, that’s our newest addition.” Knight-templar Warnold said, gesturing with his chin. “They picked him up from a smithy in Lowtown. One of his rivals reported him.”

“A smith?” Samson stood up a little straighter, peered a little harder.

A smith.

The shape of the cheekbones, the eyes... _that_ was why he looked so familiar. In that moment, Maddox turned his head and their gazes locked. Maddox tried to look away, but doubled back,  as shocked as Samson was to recognize his childhood friend. His mouth gaped, and almost formed Samson’s name. Then he was hurried away.

“You look like you just saw a ghost.”

The Maddox he knew from the neighborhood hadn’t been a mage, _had he?_

Warnold jammed an elbow into Samson’s side.

“Hey, did you hear me?”, Warnold barked.  “I said, _looks like you saw a ghost._ Is that mage a friend of yours from the slums or something?”

_Yes._

“No.” Samson blew out a breath. “I just got a whiff of you and was struck dumb by the stench. When’s the last time you washed that blighted gambeson?”

“You bastard!” Warnold laughed, and Samson laughed too.

The next time Samson saw Maddox, he wore the standard heavy Circle robes.They had cut his hair so that only a fine stubble of brown hair stood out on his skull, and his ears stuck out from either side of his nearly bald head. He was standing in the barracks smithy, the light from the forge throwing his entire form into shadow. Samson saw him out of the corner of his eye and pulled to a full stop on the threshold. A senior templar in full armor was leading Maddox around the forge, lecturing and pointing as he went.

Of course they would put him to work at the forge. Maddox was a smith before he was anything else. He had the burn scars to prove it.

To his credit, Maddox was at least pretending to look interested, though it was possible that expression was just a rictus of fear.

Maddox noticed Samson first but said nothing. Then the knight noticed him.

“Ser.” The knight inclined his head.

Samson nodded back, giving a toothy grin. “Ser,” he echoed. “I’ve broken another gauntlet I’m afraid.”

He held the gauntlet up like a white flag, keeping his gaze on the senior templar yet intensely aware of Maddox’s scrutiny.

“Well, there you go, smith,” the knight said, jabbing a finger at the gauntlet. “Time to prove yourself.”

“Yes, messere,” Maddox said softly, gingerly taking the gauntlet from Samson’s outstretched hand. “If you’ll follow me, I need to, _ah_ , take a few measurements first. To be certain.”

The senior templar exhaled through his nose and rolled his eyes. What sort of knight scares a man out of his wits, spends all day looming over him like a judge, and then mocks him when he stutters a bit? Samson didn’t know the knight well, though he thought his name might be Kerras, but at the moment, he was contemplating insulting the man’s mother _just to see what he would do_.

Luckily, Maddox rescued him from his own self-destructive impulse by walking away. And Samson was obliged to follow.

Maddox carried the gauntlet to a work table, holding it carefully in both hands.

Hesitantly, he asked, “Could you put it back on?”

Samson thrust his hand out, and Maddox slid the gauntlet back on. Maddox turned Samson’s hand over and pushed the fingers closed into a fist, pretending to examine the broken joint. For a long moment, they stood like that, their heads bowed close together.

“Hello Raleigh”, Maddox said at last.

Samson exhaled a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “So you _do_ recognize me. I thought I was going mad.”

“I wasn’t sure at first.” Maddox murmured, glancing up at Samson timidly. “You look different.”

“Must be the uniform.”

Maddox’s brow twitched in a vague frown. “It’s not just that.”, he said.

“I know.” Samson replied, more seriously.

Their gazes locked, and for a moment Samson was certain his old friend was about to say something important. But then Maddox’s eyes flicked to where the senior templar stood beside the smithy door. With an exasperated sigh, Samson pulled his hand out of the gauntlet, leaving it dangling from Maddox’s grip.

“So”, Samson said, flexing his bare hand into a fist. “Can you help me out here, ser smith, or should I just resign myself to broken fingers and split nails?”

Maddox set his jaw. “I can put this right for you, messere. If you’ll give me until the evening, I’ll prove it to you.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Samson said.

“I won’t let you down,” Maddox answered.

 

 

* * *

 

 

True to his word, Maddox mended the gauntlet and each time Samson tested the joint he remembered his friend’s cautious smile and the bravery that went into that simple act. Maddox had seen him and hoped that Samson was still the boy whom he had known in his youth, though the armor should have told him differently. For his bravery, Samson owed him. So when Maddox first hurried across the yard with a neatly tied bundle of letters hidden up his sleeve and pressed them into Samson’s hand, Samson knew that he would agree even before he knew where he was taking them. Samson had to match that bravery with proof of his own.

Samson turned the letters over in his hands and ran a finger along the top edge, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He read the name written on each and every one: a woman’s name.

“Evelina?”, he said. “Not someone I know, I take it.”

“No, she’s from Wycome. She moved to Kirkwall about three years ago.”

“You’re sending me off to give letters to your girlfriend?” Samson laughed softly. “A lot of letters here.”

“Writing to her is good for me. It distracts me.”

“From?”

“My Harrowing is this week.”

Samson glanced up then and saw Maddox standing beside him smiling wanly, his hands knotted together so tightly that his knuckles looked like bleached bone. The mirth fled Samson in a breath, leaving him feeling cold and guilty.

“First Enchanter Orsino tells me not to worry. He’s confident based on what he’s seen, that I will pass without incident.” Maddox said, looking somewhere past Samon’s shoulder. “Still, I wouldn’t mind if you were there as part of the guard. It would be a comfort to at least see one friendly face.”

At that moment, Samson couldn’t think of a worse prospect.

There was an uncomfortable tightness in his throat as he asked, “Where can I find your girl?”

Evelina was a potion-maker’s apprentice who spend her days in an apothecary in Low-town, making small remedies and poultices that were sometimes not as helpful as the master-apothecary claimed. Samson after around until he found a knight who had an assignment in Low-town.

“Just a four hour stint, near the alienage. Got a tip there might be an elven apostate girl running around down there. I’m just to go around, ask if anyone has seen her.”

“I’m on door duty again and my feet are going numb. I could use the walk-around.”, Samson said.

“You want to trade me shifts?” Warnold asked, all knowing smirks and bald suspicion.

“Consider it a favor, from you to me. I’ll owe you one.”

“Finally going to take your turn at the Rose, eh, Samson?”

“I’m finally going to take my turn with your mother, Warnold. I hear she isn’t picky.”

“Ha! Now is that any way to talk to a man you’re trying to wheedle a favor out of?”

“Come now,” Samson gave one of his slow, toothy grins. “You don’t really want that walk-around shift, do you? Strutting around at mid-day by the canals, baking in your armor?”

“Don’t remind me.” Warnold hissed, throwing his hands into the air in disgust. “I always forget how much the damned place stinks at this time of year. The water was cleaner in Starkhaven, I swear it.”

“Then we have an accord?”

“Aye, we do.”

And they sealed the switch with a touch of knuckles.

Just as he turned to leave, another thought occurred to him.

“Hey, Warnold.”

“What, man?”

“Do you know who is on guard duty for the Harrowing this week?”

Warnold blinked owlishly at him for a moment, then rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “I think Thrask said something about it?”

 _Thrask._ That was something, at least.

He made up his mind to talk to Thrask, and with Maddox’s letters hidden between his breastplate and his gambeson, he made his way down to Low-town, stopping only momentarily near the Chantry courtyard as the Grand Cleric and two rows of priests passed, going up toward the chantry for the noon service. He dropped to his knee as they filed by and the Grand Cleric favored him with a nod of her wizened head. He heard one of the priests sing softly, “ _Blessed are the righteous, the champions of the just_.” Then their cool shadows lifted from him, and he rose to his feet.

In Low-town, there was less fanfare. People made way for him .

It was no trouble to find his destination. A wooden sign with a neatly carved pestle and mortar declared the apothecary’s presence. The unlocked shop door insisted that it was open for business.

The door jamb was low, and he had to duck his head to enter. Inside, ropes of dried herbs festooned the ceiling, like festival day decorations. In the orange glow of the interior light, he could see only the vague shape of someone standing at the back of the room, with their back turned to him. He closed the door quietly, but the bell still jangled again. The _clack clack clack_ of pestle on mortar ceased momentarily then resumed with greater ferocity.

“Good day to you, ser templar.” The woman said the words like a curse. ‘The master-apothecary is not in right now.”

Samson stepped around one of the shop tables, avoiding tapping the edge with the hilt of his sword. Glass jars filled with powders were neatly arranged into rows across it’s surface.

“I’m not here for the master apothecary. I’m looking for a Lady Evelina.”

She snorted, rather ungracefully.

“Not a lady. But I’m Evelina, if that’s who you’re looking for. But if you’ve come to question me more about the smith you took, I have nothing to say. To you or anyone.”

Samson paused and watched her for a moment, and had the distinct feeling that she was seeing his armor within the mortar as she slammed the pestle down into it again and again. Her mouth was pressed into a grim line. Without meaning to, he laughed.

“Something funny, ser templar?”

“No, no not at all. You’re just not what I imagined.”

“Pardon?” She turned toward him then, scowling in confusion, and lifted a brown hand to push a dark curl back under her kerchief. She looked at him directly for the first time, up and down, and he saw that she had eyes the same gleaming dark color as obsidian . Her fingers wrapped around the pestle as if it were a dagger. “If you aren’t going to buy something, clear out.”.”

“I have something for you. From a friend we share.”

“No friend of mine is a friend of yours.” She spit.

He smirked, and tugged the packet of letters out from under his plate.

Evelina’s scowl faltered slightly, but curiosity caught her. She stepped away from the table, wiping her hands off on her apron, all the while studying the letters. Samson saw in her face the exact moment she recognized the handwriting on the letters, and the anger went out of her like dust on the wind.

She caught her breath, and darted forward with her hands out, as if she meant to catch them from falling. Samson let her take them and stepped out of her way sighty as she riffled through the stack. She found the first letter, and pulled it open. After a silent moment of eyes darting across the page, she clasped the bundle of papers to her heart, and turned her back to Samson.

The only sound in that place for a minute was the sound of her breathing. Then she set the pile of letters onto the table. Samson saw her slightly hunched back, the way she clasped her hand to her side. He thought she might be crying.

“A friend of mine and yours?” She echoed softly. “You brought me these from him?”

He shrugged. “I owed him a favor.”

“A favor?” She tested the word on the tip of her tongue. “Is that all it is?”

Folding the letter up neatly, she gathered the pile of letters into her hands and pressed them, firmly, against her body again.

Quietly she said, “Then I thank you.”

By the end of that week, Maddox went into his Harrowing.

Though he was not on duty that night, Samson found he could not rest. He loitered in the mess hall with the other knights longer than he should have, until they had nearly all cleared out but he couldn’t return to the room. His new roommate was there, the Fereldan lad, and he was gruff with his newness to the Kirkwall order and not much of a conversationalist yet. Samson let his feet carry him down the halls, following the worn stones on a circuit he had taken dozens of times.The halls were quiet but he was listening for something, a strain of sound that he couldn’t have possibly heard from this distance. It felt like he held his breath the whole night and when he finally did return to his quarters, it was to quietly strip off his armor and stand in the bar of moonlight cast on the floor from the room’s single window, staring at where the spired roof of the chantry made a dark imprint against the starry sky. At last, he shucked off his shirt.

On the cot across the room from him, his young roommate began to struggle against the blankets. Samson froze, his arms still caught in his sleeves, and waited for the lad to still. But instead, Cullen began to mutter and strike at the blankets. Motionless where he stood, Samson watched the young man flail at invisible foes. Just when he resolved to risk a punch in the mouth and wake the lad, Cullen shot upright with a broken cry, and threw his blankets onto the floor. He sat in the center of his cot, staring down at his hands , shoulders rising and falling in a tortured rhythm. Then a helpless, wretched sob bubbled up out of him. It was thin, hysterical. Like the sound of a beaten dog whimpering in an alley. It echoed off the walls. Knitting his fingers together in prayer, Cullen pressed them hard over his mouth..

 _“Maker, my enemies- my enemies are abundant. Many are those--many--”_ He struggled to shape the words, yet despite how broken they sounded, Samson still recognized the holy verses butchered by Cullen’s sobs.

They were the opening lines of the Canticle of Trials. Samson had memorized it during his Vigil.

But the lad was stuck. He couldn’t move past the first two lines, but kept repeating them over and over, more and more brokenly, until finally he gave a despairing wail and threw himself face down to muffle his grief in the mattress.

It was foolish, and perhaps unwanted, but Samson’s task for Maddox had made him brave. He picked up the canticle where Cullen had left it, and carried it onward:

_“Many are those who rise up against me._

_But my faith sustains me; I shall not fear the legion,_

_Should they set themselves against me.”_

Across from him, on the cot, the muffled sobs grew quiet. Samson was aware at once that the lad was listening for him intently. He spoke again, carefully, so that the boy would hear:

_“In the long hours of the night_

_When hope has abandoned me,_

_I will see the stars and know_

_Your Light remains.”_

Samson knew every verse and he carefully recited each, until their small shared room resonated with it.  

Then, unexpectedly, Rutherford spoke up.  

_“I have faced armies_

_With You as my shield”,_ he murmured.

_“And though I bear scars beyond counting, nothing_

_Can break me except Your absence.”_

Samson remained before the window, listening as Cullen’s breathing became smooth and even. Neither of them spoke again that night, but the lad seemed to sleep peacefully. The next morning, when Samson woke, Cullen had already awakened and gone.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He didn’t see Rutherford in the mess hall, but he did catch sight of Thrask.  Without a word, Thrask maneuvered around several tables, and came to sit beside him, elbow to elbow, like when they were fresh recruits. Thrask did not speak the entire meal, though Samson joked and conversed  with his table mates, his smile toothier than usual, because his heart was thrumming like an anvil under a hammer. He waited. When at last Thrask wiped off his hands and rose to his feet, he said only, “He did well”.

Then he walked away.

Maddox had passed his Harrowing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When he and Maddox crossed paths again, he wanted to ask how the Harrowing had been but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Just as he couldn’t question the Rutherford lad regarding what had happened to him during the upheaval at Kinloch Hold, he couldn’t ask Maddox about the Harrowing. You weren’t _supposed_ to ask a mage about what they saw during their Harrowing, and Maddox never offered to tell him.

Instead, he offered a bundle of letters topped with a folded paper bird.

“What’s this?” Samson held it up, grinning like a wolf.

“A small token of my thanks.” Maddox said, a flush of red slowly spreading from the neck of his robe toward his deceptively calm face.

“I’ll cherish it forever.”

Samson meant it as a joke when he said it, but he kept every one of those paper birds until he had a proper flock of them.

Taking letters between Maddox and Evelina became another of his duties, something he worked into his schedule alongside guard shifts, card games, and services at Chantry. Each time he delivered word from Maddox into her waiting hands, a rare smile swept across Evelina’s face, as brief and vibrant as a the light from a lantern dancing across the surface of water. And when he brought her letters back the the Gallows, Maddox’s face lit up like a flame, and he had smiled with such relief that Samson was sure Maddox would have grabbed him up and danced him around the yard if they had been standing anywhere else.

“Your name is Raleigh,” Evelina said one day. He hadn’t told her that before. She just had just called him Samson, as everyone else did, save for Maddox.

His eyebrows did something that made her cough out a laugh.

“Maddox mentions you in his letters,” she explained and set aside her work to take the packet from his hands.

It was evening this time, and the shop was dark. He was off duty that night, but still in his armor. Templars did not leave the Gallows in civilian clothes no matter the time of day.

“There’s nothing else to write about up in the Gallows. The boredom is likely making him batty.” Samson gave a snort of laughter, and Evelina echoed with a chuckle of her own. When he looked at her, she was watching him with a softened mouth and a heavy lidded gaze that he didn’t know how to read.

She surprised him when she reached up and took his face between her hands, pulling him down toward her lips.

He flinched back. She let go of him all at once, looking at him with an equal measure of shock.

“Maddox.” He threw his friend’s name out between them like a shield.

Evelina’s face fractured slightly, and the desperate smile she wore turned sour.

“Do you think it’s easy for me being here without him?”, she whispered. “It’s like being in love with a ghost. He haunts me in letters, here but not. I can hear him but not hold him. It’s like he’s dead.”

“He’s not dead. No one should talk about him like that, least of all you.”

“You think less of me,” she said, her eyes fierce and bright with unshed tears.

“No.”

“You think I’m out here, running around? I’m lonely, Raleigh. I’m _lonely_. He has you and what do I have? This stupid shop. These small, petty people. All my days were so good with him nearby. He used to make me sweet. Can you believe it? Me, sweet? I’m not. It’s not how I am. But when he was around, I could be. He made me that way.”

“I’m sorry.”

She scowled at him.  “Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Just take him this.”

She reached out, very deliberately this time, so Samson knew he could get away. But she merely took him by the wrist and pushed a packet of letters into his palm.

For a week, that moment echoed in his thoughts, and though he could laugh around it in the practice yard and at table with his colleagues, it lingered in his mind, waiting for a quiet moment to make itself heard again.  He had to bring Maddox the letters, yet each time he reminded himself of his duty,  his ribs tightened painfully. He scraped together his strength and navigated the halls toward Maddox’s cell. Maddox could be down at the smithy. He could be in one of the yards, or in the library. Or he could be just on the other side of the door. Samson didn’t risk the handle, merely slid Evelina’s letters under the door and left as quickly as possible. After he rounded the corner, he thought he heard a latch lift somewhere along the length of the hall, but he kept walking.

 _Coward_.

He didn’t let himself think on why, exactly, he began to avoid those places where he knew he would see Maddox. When one of his pauldrons needed repair, he sent a knight-recruit off with it to the smithy instead of taking it himself. He traded a shift in the library for one out at the gate, roasting in his armor in the heat of the sun. He told himself he needed time, though time for what, he wasn;’ certain. He didn’t want to think about any of it. Perhaps what he wanted was time to forget.

In the end, it was Maddox who finally sought Samson out and caught him alone in the open stretch of hall between the templars’ barracks and the mages’ quarters. He appeared at one at the end of the shadow striped corridor, the hem of his robe resting just on the edge of a shadow. Samson saw him and froze midstep like a hunted thing.

For an instant, Samson felt all the anxiety that had dogged him in one fierce volley, and then it subsided. He breathed out a resigned sigh, and waited as Maddox crossed toward him, striding silently in and out of shadow.

“I haven’t seen your face in a while.”

“It hasn’t changed much since the last time you saw it. May need shave, though.”, Samson said.  He tried out a grin, but knew it was wrong by the way Maddox’s face collapsed a little.

“Is something the matter?”, Maddox asked very carefully.

“I left your girl’s letters under your door,” Samson said, abandoning the smile. He found himself wishing for a little vial of lyrium. The blue glow could help straighten his spine, then he could look Maddox in the eye.

“I know. I got them,” Maddox said quietly.

“I certainly hope you got them. I’d be a piss-poor messenger if I delivered them to the wrong man.” Samson tried to laugh, but all that came out was a dry cough.

He was aware of Maddox’s scrutiny. It was a quiet pressure but even the weight of his gaze felt like too much. The air felt heavy.

“Is something wrong?”, Maddox asked, so softly his lips barely moved.

Samson had the opportunity here to divert the conversation but he had already failed at it twice, and Maddox seems to see right through him with those calm, careful eyes. He couldn’t muster up the strength to try again.

Casting his gaze around the hall, he took Maddox by the elbow and pulled him into one of the statue alcoves where a stone Andraste stood in her long robes, holding up a flame. There was a bench there, where one was meant to sit and pray or reflect on the edicts of Andraste. Instead, Samson collapsed on it in a jangle of plate metal.  Maddox hesitated, then carefully sat down beside him.

“You don’t want to take the letters for me anymore,” Maddox said.

Samson steepled his fingers before his lips and stared ahead in silence.

“I rely too much on your friendship, I know,” The mage continued, studying Samson’s profile intently. “And I know you risk much in taking them for me-”

“The risk isn’t just mine. It’s yours, too.” Samson said in exasperation.  “If it was every once in an age, I could get away with that. But playing messenger boy for you is a second duty now, and it’s getting tighter and tighter around here every day with the way Meredith is carrying on.”

“I know,” Maddox replied firmly. “Believe me, _I know_.”

“I’m saying this because I’m your friend.” He paused. “And there’s something else I have to say.”

His attention strayed upwards toward the impassive face of the stone Andraste looming over them. It was odd, how much the knight-commander looked like her, but Samson was certain that it was a look she meant to cultivate. Still, it was easier to look at her face and think of the knight-commander than it was to meet Maddox’s gaze and think of Evelina.

“What is it?”

“Your girl.” Samson swallowed reflexively.

Maddox leaned toward him, trying desperately to catch his eye. “Did something happen to her?”

“Nothing’s happened to her,” Samson answered quickly.

“Then what _is_ it?”

He sighed in resignation. “I don’t want to speak ill of her. I don’t want to cause harm. Maker knows you’ve both been through enough.”

“She likes you, Raleigh. She trusts you. So do I.”

Samson snorted. “She’s got an itch that needs scratching and she thinks I’ll do it for her.”

Maddox grew still and his gaze slowly drifted down to where his hands rested on his knees. Samson had said it wrong. It wasn’t supposed to come out like that. But Maddox was sitting there, still and silent, staring at his folded hands.

“I’m sorry-”

“Would you?”, Maddox asked quietly.

“What?” Samson choked on laugh. “ _Would I_?”

“Would you, if she wanted you to and I.. _.I_ wanted you to?”

“You can’t be serious.”

Maddox glanced up from under his brows, and the steady intensity of his regard crushed the air out of Samson’s lungs.  

“What is it that you want from me?”, Samson asked in a voice that scraped like gravel.

They stared at one another for a long, tense moment, then Maddox carefully lifted his scarred hand from his knee. Samson had all the time in the world to retreat. He could stand up and go, and refuse to look back.  But something pinned him to that stone bench.

Gently, Maddox rested his thumb against Samson’s bottom lip then traced a careful line down his chin and back along the length of his jaw. He drew a shuddering breath into his lungs and trapped it there, closing his eyes as Maddox’s fingertips sought the place where his pulse flickered in his throat. There was apprehension in him, but something else. Exhaustion? He didn’t want to fight anymore, he didn’t want to turn his friend away and the fingertips stroking along his throat asked him small, silent questions. He opened his eyes and let out his held breath in a defeated sigh.

With his gauntleted hands, he reached up and caught Maddox wrist. He pulled the hand away from his face. It was Maddox’s turn to freeze, to watch him with vague fear. But all Samson did was touch the scar that curved up from Maddox’s palm and across the tender skin between thumb and forefinger.  Maddox’s hand turned under his own and caught his gloved fingers tightly.

“What about your girl?”, Samson asked quietly.

“I love her and she loves me. Never doubt that,” Maddox replied in a rush of breath. “But you... I don’t think you realize what it means to have you here. We can work something out, the three of us. I know we can.”

Samson nodded, but found himself staring down at their clasped hands.

“Come to my room tonight. We can talk or-”

Samson laughed miserably. “Talk?”

“Please.” Maddox breathed the word like a benediction.

Samson pressed his chapped lips together and conceded. He heard Maddox sigh in relief.  

He waited until Maddox loosed his grip on his hand, then Samson rose to his feet.

“Tonight,” Maddox said.

He took one last look up at the stone Andraste. “Tonight,” Samson echoed.

He stepped out of the alcove and into the corridor, hurrying away without a glance back.

 

* * *

 

 

That night, he lay in bed, listening to the rumble of Cullen’s soft snores from the adjacent cot. Eventually, he sat up and reached under the bed. In the dark, he took out the box that held his Chantry sanctioned lyrium ration and opened it. Inside, flattened and tucked in a neat pile, where the paper birds Maddox had given him. He felt for the flask of lyrium with the tips of his fingers and found it. Just a single small sip would be enough to strengthen him.

With the draught still burning his throat, he rose and dressed.

Rutherford didn’t stir as he closed the door behind him.

 

* * *

 

 

There was a slow gathering of muscle, a tightening in his gut, where the strength in his sword-swing came from. His body tensed as if he was preparing to parry an opponent's strike but all he did was reach out and put his hand on the door knob. His breath went still and shallow. In that moment, the only sound he could hear, all along the corridor, was the sound of his own breathing.

He _had_ go in, or turn away immediately. In another moment, he would have no other choice. One of his fellow templars on their night-circuit of the mages’ quarters would pass by and see him standing there, with his hand on the door. Then he would have to leave, and the word would be all around the barracks by tomorrow morning. For what other reason would a templar out of his armor visit a mage’s room in the middle of the night?

He tried the handle. It turned silently under his hand.

Inside, a single bedside lantern brightened the sparsely furnished cell. It was no more decorative than his own room in the barracks. Samson’s attention darted over a desk, a chest of drawers, a basin, a bed. Iron lattice-work meant to look like lace covered the room’s single, narrow window. Pretty bars for the mage’s cage.

Samson had never seen the inside of Maddox’s room before, though he had known for months where it was. It was oddly without outward decoration. He looked for proof of the room’s occupant and found it at last, pinned to the wall above the bed: a paper bird, folded neatly by the mage’s own hand.

“You’re here,” said a low, perfectly bewildered voice.

Samson flinched; cast about for the source. He found Maddox at the desk, where he’d been sitting so still that Samson had looked right past him.

Carefully, Maddox laid aside his writing and neatly shuffled the loose leafs of paper into a pile. Then he waited. Samson realized, suddenly, that Maddox was waiting on him.

There was no way to lock the latch from the inside, so Samson merely pushed the door closed and let his hand drop back to his side.

“I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind.” Maddox pulled that small smile, yet this time, Samson saw something hungry in it that raised alarms in his lyrium-sharpened mind.

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to”, Maddox said softly.

“We don’t?” Samson laughed low and wild. He hadn’t meant to but the sound just rattled out of him. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“Yes, but what do _you_ want?”

The lyrium demanded action, any action, and he had to hold himself very rigid to keep from pacing the perimeter of the room.

Being in that room felt inevitable. Maddox couldn't force him to stay. Even if he tried with all his strength, there were many ways a trained templar like Samson could undo a man like Maddox.

But Samson didn’t want to hurt his friend. What he wanted, desperately, was to feel... _to feel_ …How to explain this feeling locked inside him? All this affection for this man, but not the kind Maddox was asking for tonight. Samson didn’t have the words for it, but it was there nonetheless; a cold fist around his heart.

“Are you angry with me?”, Maddox asked quietly, taking a step forward.

Samson shook his head. “No.”

“Is it because I’m a man?”

“That’s not it.”

“Because I’m a mage and you’re a templar?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Fingers closed on his sleeve. Samson glanced up and what he saw in Maddox’s eyes was fear enough to match the fear in his own heart.

“Here.” Samson unceremoniously ducked his head to pull his shirt up and over his shoulders.

Maddox took a step back but his hands remained outstretched, hovering just above Samson’s chest. His eyes darted across Samson’s exposed skin, and Samson swore he could feel it, the scrape and scratch of Maddox’s eyes over his bare flesh.

He threw the shirt onto the footboard of the bed.

“Come on then.” He said, and opened his arms.

Maddox stepped eagerly into his embrace, sliding his hands up and over Samson’s shoulders, kneading and grasping at the nape of his neck.

“You’re tense,” he whispered, fingers dragging down Samson’s back. “Every part of you is stiff.”

Samson breathed out a laugh. “Some parts more than others.”  

Maddox laughed with him, hot and hungry against the curve of his ear.

His ribs flexed against Samson’s as their breathing reached deeper, took on a particular cadence. His hands stroked down Samson’s sides and along the hem of his trousers until fingers blindly found the fastenings.

Maddox coaxed open the top button with his thumb.

“Let me see what I can do about that,” he said.

He tried.

They both did.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Samson left the room with a bundle of letters, without a glance back. Many times after that, in the dark, when he was alone and everything felt cold and far away, he would remember that moment and curse himself for a fool.

He should have looked back. He might have, if he had known then that it would be the last time he saw his friend.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Samson returned to his room, he stripped the rumpled clothing from his body and eased back down onto his cot. He lay atop the rough-spun blanket, arms straight at his sides, bare toes pointed at the high ceiling.

It was over with now. He couldn’t take it back.

The cot across from his squeaked, and a shape with tousled blond curls reared up from the nest of twisted sheets. Narrowed eyes glinted in the dark.

“Where were you?” The voice was sharp. Alert. He’d been lying away for some time.

Samson felt his exhaustion in his bones.

“ _Samson_. Where were you?”

“Go back to sleep, Rutherford.”

He rolled onto his side, his back turned on the young Fereldan, and pretended to sleep.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Halt, knight.” Samson glanced over his shoulder, and saw three templars in full armor marching toward him in a tight formation. The one in the lead was a senior templar, by the look of his armor, while the two following him wore the standard armor that Samson himself wore.

“Recruit, Ser Samson does not have the knight-commander’s permission to leave the Gallows,” the senior templar barked.

Ruvena looked toward Hugh, and then both looked at Samson with dawning expressions of mingled confusion and fear.

“What is this about lads?” Samson scraped together his best smile, and with air of confidence he did not feel, he slowly pivoted to face the knights.” I have the afternoon off and I’m looking forward to a drink. You wouldn’t grudge a man a hard-earned drink, would you?”

“I’m sorry, serah, but the knight-commander has forbidden you to leave the premises. We are to take you to see her immediately.”

His smile faltered slightly, but he laughed anyway.

“Well, I suppose that drink will have to wait.” He said over his shoulder, more for the recruits than for the knights speaking to him. He stepped forward and immediately saw the three knight’s tense. The senior templar put his hand firmly on the hilt of his sword.

“Do not move, serah.” The senior templar’s voice rumbled threateningly from within the depths of his helmet.

“Alright.” He held his hands up slowly.

“Arms out at your sides.”

Samson did as he was told. The man nodded, and the two other knight’s came forward. The first unfastened his sword from Samson side and removed it, wrapping the belt around the scabbard several times before stepping back. The second moved forward and began patting gauntleted hands along his armored form. At this point, Samson noticed that they were gaining unwanted attention. He made a joke, something hollow and lewd, to make the knight who was frisking him uncomfortable but it didn’t stop the templar from finding where a corner of paper stuck out from beneath Samson’s chest plate.

The knight paused, then deliberately pinched ahold of the papers and drew them out from where they were crushed between the metal and Samson’s body. A scrap of folded paper fell loose, and though it was flattened now, when it landed in the dirt at their feet, it looked distinctly like a little paper bird. Samson tilted his chin skyward, and silently closed his eyes. A great heavy sigh  floated out of him, and he wished for a moment that it would take his soul with it.

“What is that?”

“Letters, messere. Just as the informant said.”

Samson opened his eyes, his smile gone.

“Melwyn? Is that you?” Samson asked sharply. Melwyn was someone he considered a comrade. He had taken over her guard shifts on at least two occasions, when she had snuck off to the Blooming Rose. She ignored him when he said her name.

“Melwyn?” He called again.

“Come with us, serah,” The senior templar said.

They fell in around him, the way they would to escort a mage into the Gallows; no way to turn left or right, no way to turn around. He felt a firm hand on each of his shoulders. They pushed, but he would not be dragged like some errant child. He put his shoulders back and walked, his face frozen in a defiant smirk and as he left the yard he looked into the eyes of each man and woman who had come to gawk.

It was a brilliant show; that posture, that smile. But it was all show. The smirk was frozen on him in a rictus and his gut felt cold, cold and heavy. With each step toward the knight-commander’s office, the plate metal bore down on him in a way it never had before. The halls seemed desolate, and when he did see someone, out of the corner of his eye, it was only a fraction of an instant before they flinched back around a corner.

They paused before the wide okay door, and the senior templar leaned forward to rap firmly against it. The sound resonated down the hall, up the tall walls. Far above, open skylights covered in metal grates allowed a view of the sky, but the sky was almost colorless, nearly white. Featureless.

From within the room, the knight commander imperiously called, “Come in.”

The door swung open, and Samson flinched at the bright gleam of light that fell through the window and caught on the commander’s  burnished armor. He blinked, dazzled, and at this moment of hesitation, his escort thrust him through the door. They filed in and closed the door behind them.

Samson blinked  at the ivory haired woman standing at the corner of the desk. Her face was fair, and lined  at the eyes and mouth from scowling, but she had that regal coldness of a statue of Andraste, with high cheekbones and a square jaw.

The senior templar stepped around him and offered her the sheaf of papers.

Samson swallowed, unable to breathe, as the knight-commander opened the packet and stretched the paper between her hands, her fierce eyes flicking over the pages slowly at first, and then faster. The only sound in the office was the rustle of pages as she impatiently riffled through the next, and the next, and the next.

Finally, with a snort of disgust, she tossed them onto the desk and rounded on Samson, staring at him in furious wide eyed silence. At last, she spoke.

“I do not know why it was that Guylian found you worthy of personally bestowing upon you the honor of a sunshield,” The knight-commander sneered. “But I am happy now that he is not here to witness your betrayal of the Order first-hand.”

“Ser, may I speak?”Samson asked.

Inkwell, papers, and leather bound ledgers jumped up two inches off the desk as she slammed a mail fist down on the corner. “I am not finished, knight. I have only just begun, and you will be silent!” Her voice crackled like lightning.

Samson raised his chin, and dutifully said nothing.

“This is a travesty,” She  declared. “I would ask you why, ser knight, you would turn on me like this, but I have heard testimony that makes your motivations very clear.”

She must have read the question in the furrowing of his brow.

“Pah!” She huffed. “Do you think I am blind, ser knight? Do you think that I do not have eyes and ears all throughout the Gallows? This is my domain!”

 _There is no draught of lyrium that does not go uncounted. There is no absence that is not, in some way remarked upon._ To remain silent, though, _that_ was part of the pact, the unspoken agreement between all templars. And someone had broken that pact. How many spies did Meredith have? How many templars thought they were speaking in confidence to a friend, when they were speaking to the knight-commander’s lackey?

He flinched as the knight-commander flicked the papers, send them scattering.

“Dalliances between mages and templars are strictly forbidden, knight. You know that very well,” she said, and her eyes flashed with contempt.

_Dalliances?_

A surge of indignation brought the color flaring bright into his cheeks. He opened his mouth to protest but the only words that came to mind were a string of colorful expletives.

“You seem surprised that you were found out.” The knight-commander said icily. “You should have expected as much, with the way you were carrying on in a public space.”

 _In the alcove, in the hall, beneath the sweet and silent gaze of the stone Andraste_. Samson shook his head, the rejection his own as well as a denial.

“The letters are _not_ mine!” He insisted, more fiercely.

The knight-commander snorted.

“There is no reason to deny it. You were seen. And even if that hadn't been the case, even if that transgression was not witnessed by one of your own fellows, these letters proof enough.”

“They’re nothing. Did you read them?” He said, shaking his fist toward the crumpled missives. “They’re personal letters. Bad poetry. The words of a lovelorn fool to his sweetheart. There is nothing in there that could hurt you.”

Meredith’s pale blue eyes narrowed into slits, and he realized he had said the wrong thing. The cluttered office suddenly seemed too small.

“Insubordination cannot be tolerated.” She rapped out crisply, walking around her desk.  “I cannot have my own knights conspiring in the the ranks, whether they do so maliciously or simply out of their own selfishness.”

Cullen stepped forward and pulled the large, broad-backed chair out for her, and she sat down with a clank of metal plates, as regally as the Divine herself sitting on the sunburst throne.  Samson looked at him, realizing for the first time since he had entered the room that the blond Fereldan lad was standing in the corner beside the knight-commander’s desk. It had been hard to see him. Blinding white light came through the window, blotting out his shape, but now that Samson had seen him, he could not _unsee_ him. His eyes fixed on Cullen’s face, and he felt a sharp blade of realization slip between his ribs.

Who had seen him with Maddox? Who had asked him last night, accusingly, with fire in his eyes, _“Where were you?”_

The freshed-face Fereldan bastard; the boy on a leash. Samson glanced behind him, at the two templars flanking him wondering if he could fight through them. Even if he wrested his sword away and got out the door, he was in the Gallows, surrounded. What could he possibly do?

“What is it that you want of me, Knight-commander?”, Samson asked.

For a long moment, she studied him from behind her steepled fingers. Then, she swept aside the letters and  pushed forward a fresh sheet of paper, turning it with her index finger so that he could read it.

He stepped toward the desk, leaning down just enough to make out the words. _”I, Ser Raleigh Samson, of the Templar order of Kirkwall, hereby resign my place as knight-templar…”_

“You  want me to resign.” He laughed slightly. He couldn’t help it. Instead of anger, he simply felt exhaustion. He was tired. _So very tired._ “And how long did it take you to write this up, ser?” He plucked the missive off the table, waving it in the air. “Do you see this?” He said, glancing back over his shoulder at the senior templar, at Melwyn and the other knight. He didn’t expect an answer from any of them.

“The ink is dry,” He marveled, swiping a gloved finger across the blocky writing. “You must’ve had this prepared for quite some time. Did you write it, Rutherford?”

Cullen’s gaze remained riveted on the back wall of the office, amid the knight-commander’s shelves of books and knives.

Samson’s smile became a snarl. “Hey, _friend_ , did you write this?”

“Will you sign?” Knight-Commander Meredith’s voice was even.

“This doesn’t mention the letters. It mentions only philosophical differences which make it impossible for me to continue my duties as a templar with the obedience and steadfastness that is required. Did I say that right? ‘Philosophical differences’? Is that what you call _this_?”

“If you do not sign,” she said. “Then I will be forced to disclose your treachery to the entire order. You will be made an example of for all others. They will know about this mage you had a relationship with. You will be utterly discredited.”

“”You only have half the truth, and you’ll just make up the rest. Either way, I’m out of the Order without the by-your-leave to defend myself.”

“Sign,” Meredith grit out.

“No,” Samson snapped back, and crumpled the confession in his hand.

“Then you leave me no choice!”

She gathered herself up, rising up to blot out the light from beyond the window. Samson could not see her face. It was all in darkness, a sharp relief against the light, but he could see the gleam of her vicious blue eyes and he glared into them defiantly.

“Ser Raleigh Samson, you are a disgrace to the templar order. You do evil without even trying, and cast a shadow over all of us.You have lost my trust, and so you have lost the trust of every templar here. You are hereby stripped of your rank and title, and expelled from the Order without stipend. Take him to the gate, then give him his sword. He may leave only with what he is carrying. Knight-lieutenant Cullen, take two others with you and fetch the mage.”

“Knight-lieutenant?” Samson laughed despite himself. “You promoted him to knight-lieutenant? Is that the reward for betrayal? _A promotion_?”

“May the Maker have mercy on you in the days to come, Raleigh Samson.” She snapped her fingers. “Get him out of my sight!”

Three pairs of gauntlets slapped down on his arms and shoulders, and he was dragged backward out of the room. His last glimpse of the knight-commander was obscured by the slamming office door.

His guardians marched him down the hall and back out into the yard, where the sky was heavy with slate-dark storm clouds. From somewhere over the harbour, came the menacing shudder of approaching thunder. It was going to rain, and there was just about nothing as awful as being caught in the rain in full armor, with the rain seeping into the cloth under padding, and the silverite trapping in the heat. Yet all he could think was, _How could could Rutherford do this?_ They had been friends, hadn’t they?

_Hadn’t they?_

_Their voices in harmony, singing the Canticle of Trials..._

It was at that moment that he saw Cullen again through the pillars, marching with two other knights toward the barracks forges.  

Samson pulled to a stop, only to be shoved forward by the shoulder from behind.

“Rutherford!” he called, his voice resonating through the hall. Across the empty yard, Cullen glanced up, his precision march only faltering slightly. He peered around, saw Samson, then continued on his way.

“Rutherford!” Samson bellowed, panic seeping into his voice. A furious flush darkened his face, hot and strangling. “Rutherford, why are you taking him to the chantry?” The knights to his left and right grabbed ahold of his arms and dragged him forward, but Samson twisted in their grip, shouting with all of his strength until his voice cracked.

“Void take you, answer me, Rutherford! Cullen! _Cullen!_ ”

But the templars dragged him onward, and it began to rain; sheets of warm, smothering rain. _Thunder over the bay_ , swallowing up his roaring rage; every curse forged in the shape of Cullen Rutherford’s name.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Samson pried himself up off the street, he let his feet take him back to Darktown, where he found the dwarf girl-- _Clan Cadash. Neave_ \--- just where he had left her, as if she’d been waiting for him the whole time.

As if she heard his shuffling gait all the way from across town.

She smiled at him as if he were an old friend.

“Well, if it isn’t Just-Samson.”

“I need the dust,” he said, hoarsely.

“How much coin do you got?”

He jerked his head in a convulsive shake. “None. I have nothing, understand? But I need it. I _need_ it.”

“You’re as ugly as sin, but I’d eat you alive and enjoy every bite,” she said with a mean-spirited playfulness. “But I can’t take favors as payment-- only coin, or _Andraste knows_ someone up top will accuse me of skimming again.”

“I’ll work it off.” The desperation was in his voice, and he didn’t try to hide it. He begged her; _he implored._ “I’ll work for it. I swear I will. Just help me out, just this once. Please. _Please_.”

As he untied his pride before her, she simply stood there, arms crossed, pipe in her mouth, and watched at him shrewdly, all trace of her playful smile gone.

“You’re skin and bones underneath those rags now, aren’t you?”, she said at last. “But you used to be a knight. A templar.”

“I used to be,” he said.

“Do you remember how to use a sword?”

“I could never forget.”

“Then I do, indeed, have a job for you.” The light returned to her eyes and she smirked, just a little. “Welcome to my employ, Just-Samson. You may not live to regret it."


End file.
